Dancing with The Devil
by Latent Lullaby
Summary: A WWII story about Kagome, a Japanese American nurse and Inuyasha, a spy sneaking into the AmericanJapanese infantry in the United States army. Inuyasha is injured and... well, we'll just see how things turn out... INUKAG
1. Chapter 1

-regular text

-_Flashback_

-'though'

Dancing with the Devil

By Zeldagurl

Chapter 1

Authors note: Alrighty... I'm not sure when this idea came to me, but ever since I thought of it, I've been trying to figure out a way to make it work both culturally and historically. I've asked around and done a little research on the subject of the 442 regiment (correct me if I'm wrong) which was a Japanese regiment serving the United States. They were sent to places like Italy and France and fought some of the toughest fights, and actually came through them alive.

So, out of admiration of what this regiment went through, and inspiration from my father and his writing and interest in war, I'd like to write this fic from the point of view of a japanese spy infiltrating the 442 regiment, two japanese nurses and a doctor. Yeah, you guessed it! It's the Inu-tachi, World War II style. Sadly, Shippou and Kirara might not make the fic, but, if I'm able to fit them in, I will.

Having gotten past my inu initiation fanfic (Cast in Stone), I want to take a break from the long chain of one-shots I've been writing and try again to make a good inu fanfiction, worthy of reading. Thanks so much to the fans and readers of my past fanfics, without their advice and encouragment, I wouldn't be writing.

I don't want to beg you for reviews (although I do love them) because, I believe that it's up to you whether you tell me your opinion or not, whether it's good or bad. Just try to tell me if I'm doing a good job once in a while, believe me, it helps!

This will be a detailed fiction, serious, dark, negative, slow maybe even hard to digest at times (ach! My stomach!), but I hope you stick with me, like a lot of you have always done. Thank you...

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of the other characters belonging to Rumiko Takahashi, I simply like doing funny things to them.

(Begin)

The nurse worked quickly, surrounded by her fellow nurses and a doctor. She shook as she moved, but she didn't let that bother her as she coughed quietly. It was just from lack of sleep, she told herself, she wasn't afraid. Thats what she convinced herself to believe.

At least she was more useful here than in that internment camp... She couldn't sleep there either anyway... There was always someone crying, or screaming; always that uncertain feeling that she could be yelled at, or beaten because she was a Japanese girl loyal to the United States. Because she was a Japanese girl, imprisoned in a camp for a reason she couldn't quite understand.

She shook her head, reminding herself to concentrate on her task at hand. She wiped the man's forehead gently. He was trying to talk, but failing miserably. In an effort to calm her patient down ,she placed a shaky finger to her mouth to shush him.

"Save your strength..." She smiled thinly, hoping her tired anxiousness wouldn't show through.

Blood was splotched all over her uniform, she tried not to let the smell get to her. It was putrid; the stench of wounded and dying men that she had to wake up to every morning and go to sleep breathing every night. But that wasn't important now... Nothing was as important as saving this man's life.

Sweat rolled down the sides of her face as she tried to supress the bleeding of the man who lay on the table in front of her. As in everything she did, this nurse was determined. She would not let him die. Right now, her and her counterparts held his life in their hands; She wouldn't let him slip through her fingers, not like all the others.

"Sango, I need some water and some bandages; tell Satsuki to get some painkiller over here! Stat!" She barked at her friend. The said woman nodded and at once took off running towards the medical supply store room. Her thoughts willed the woman to run faster, hoping she would be back before the man died. He was losing way too much blood; she needed to supress the blood flow to the outside of his body. It wasn't looking good...

'No!' She thought, shaking her head in stubborness, she couldn't think like that!

'I won't let him die! I can't!'

She looked down at the solider, meeting his eyes with hers, trying to encourage him in any way possible not to give up. He gasped for breath, his eyes seemed hardly able to focus on any one thing. But still, the look in his eyes found hers and quietly disturbed her with the degree of urgency it portrayed.

"Sir! Calm down, we can save you! Just hold on!" She pleaded with him, holding an iron grip on her emotions. She looked at the doctor, who was busy trying to remove the bullet in his stomach. She wished Sango would hurry up with those supplies...

The man let out the most teribble noise; it was as if he was trying as hard as he could to breathe, but he couldn't get the air into his lungs. It was like a shriek of an unearthly creature, and not the gasp of a dying solider. He was immobilized by fear, and the nurse stood beside him, mopping his forehead with a wet rag. She felt so helpless, in the face of this agony.

"Kagome!" She whipped her head around to see Sango, leading Satsuki who was cradling an injector full or morphine, ready to be used.

"C'mon! We're losing him!" She yelped, immidiately turning back to the man, surprised to find that the man's gasping gutteral noises had somewhat quieted. She looked in his eyes, crying out when she saw the light fading n his eyes. The telltale sign that he was dying right before her eyes.

"NO! STAY WITH US!" She cried out, tears finally falling as she lost control of all the restraint, and all of her emotions that she had pushed away, inside. She coughed violently, covering her mouth as her lungs shook with pain at the heightened state of panic her being was in.

But his body had already become limp, and his eyes, his life was leaving him...

Kagome could only stand there and watch him die, the same way that she had sworn she wouldn't let him do., breathing heavily from her slow recovery from her cough.

Why was this happening? Why was he dying despite her efforts? She was trying so hard... Why couldn't she just keep him alive?

"No...! No...!" She whimpered, letting her hands fall limply to her sides.

"There's nothing more we can do ladies..." The doctor said from somewhere beside her... Kagome coudn't tell. She was feeling numb again, she felt numb and shocked everytime a solider died in front of her or anywhere near her.

His last breath escaped his lips in a whisper and all signs of life ceased. Doctor Miroku grabbed a sheet from a pile laying on the table beside him. He then threw the sheet over the now dead body of the solider and lifted his clipboard, still panting from the exertion of trying for all he was worth to save the man.

"Name: Takeo Mitsuki..." He turned to Sango, ignoring the little gasp that both her and Kagome had just made amidst the latter's rasping breaths.

"Let the coroner know his name as soon as possible, then all of you, make your rounds." He laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.

"Be strong..." He smiled sadly as she turned stoic brown eyes on him. He squeezed her shoulder once before leaving to record the death and grab himself a cup of coffee to calm his own nerves. Satsuki followed with the shot of morphine still ready in her hands.

Sango sidled up to Kagome, grabbing her hand gently and looking down at the body.

"It's our Takeo isn't it? From school..."

"Yeah... the class clown." Kagome sniffled and used her other hand to wipe the tears from her eyes childishly.

"I never imagined that I would watch him die." She couldn't start bawling now, she had work to do. She couldn't be weak, she had to be strong. There were other men that needed her help, or else, they might all die too.

As Sango led her away, she glanced back at her former classmate... Once he had teased her about her pigtails, smiled at her from across the classroom, even though he was supposed to be in trouble He ran to get Sango when her period came with a roaring vengence of cramps and she was in pain. He had been worried about her, despite his reputation.

They had been good friends.

And now he was dead...

He had died without a soul to comfort him, alone and afraid on a metal table somewhere in Italy. And now he would be sent home in a bodybag to the people who loved him... Except, home didn't exist anymore anyway... Not in the literal sense, not in the emotional sense...

No matter how many men died, no matter how different they were in life, and how loved and cherished they had been; It seemed that, in war, they all died the same way... Slain for a country, that, in their case, had imprisoned them and treated them like they were dirt. Even though they were loyal, and they fought for the same reason that the white-americans fought. They weren't so different... Yet, they had been shut away for lack of trust on their home countries part.

Were they so different that they couldn't be trusted, even though they were abused by their own country-men for siding with the enemy.

Were they so different?

(switch)

He shifted uneasily in his seat, drumming his fingers impatiently on his knees. The ship would soon dock, and he would soon begin his mission.

His objective was simple, to find out the plans of the japanese units in the United States army and to upset anything that might help the enemy to win the war. Because of his looks, and carefully calculated moves, he was successfully able to volunteer to join the four hundred and fourty second regiment. He had been planted into a japanese family that was loyal to the japanese empire, taking the place of their son who had been sent elsewhere. The operation had taken place just before the bombing of the American port of Pearl Harbor.

He had then been sent to an internment camp, like all of the other Japanese people, and had volunteered to join the army with a motive to drive him as far as he had gone.

But, this wasn't important to him; not beyond the sense of duty instilled in him by his superiors and peers. He didn't care about the war, he didn't feel a sense of national pride in his country. He didn't care about anything Japan had offered him. This job was only something to do, something to pass the time. He had lost the will to aspire long ago, and so, drifted through life from one military mission to another.

After his mother had died before his very eyes, he kind of lost the will to try and live on. He just lived... He didn't take any pleasure in anything he did. He thought that, at least he was doing something worthwhile with a meaningless existence.

If he was required to decieve, steal, lie, betray; it didn't matter, he would do it. And he wouldn't falter and fall with emotions like his fellow infiltrators and spies. He WAS emotionless, so he didn't have to think about what was right and wrong. That was how he had been trained, how he had lived since his mother had died. It seemed the perfect persona for a person who lied to and betrayed people for a living.

That was why, his superiors had picked him over all of the other possible agents. And that was why he was on such a mission now.

"So you think we'll actually see some action?" The solider next to him nudged him excitedly, earning a glare from the spy. He sobered himself up of his excitement, noticing that the man beside him hardly shared his enthusiasm nor his cheerful anxiousness.

"Of course we will." With a last glare at the solider beside him, the spy settled deeper into his seat, setting his mouth in a tight line. He really didn't want to talk, he wasn't required to socialize,except to further the mission, so he meant not to...

But he figured that the guy next to him wouldn't leave him alone anyway, so he might as well at least try. It wasn't like he didn't know how...

"It's war after all." He reminded the overexcited solider beside him.

"Yeah,I guess I shouldn't be so excited. Seeing as we were all put into those camps and all..." He shifted and gripped his gun tighter with a wary smile on his face.

"But... This is the chance for me to show that I'm a man to my family, to fight like my fathers have." The spy scoffed inwardly at the idea. He couldn't even remember what his father or grandfather looked like, he hadn't ever known them. He would never be willing to fight, just because they had. They had probably stepped on other people and cheated for their positions of high power if they were anything like his brother. They wouldn't have gotten their hands so dirty as to fight with honor.

He would never give them the satisfaction of fighting to be just like them...

"Good luck with that." He said moodily, eyeing his surroundings, and the observing the tense contemplation that his fellow soliders were struggling with. Great... one hundred volunteer soliders, and he got stuck with the talkative one...

"So what's your name? Mine's Hojo." He chirped to the spy, who sighed and blearily wished that the boy would just shut up.

"Inuyasha. The name's Inuyasha." It was as close to the truth as he could dally. He couldn't give his full name away, his superiors had warned him heavily about that. But he could at least tell the truth to an extent, if that was all he could say, No point in lying uselessly.

The boy, Hojo, stuck out a gloved hand with an honest smile,

"Nice to meet you Inuyasha!" The spy awkwardly took his hand and shook it, pulling back as far as he could after the handshake was done and over with. He had never been good with physical contact. He hated it whenever he had to touch another person. Maybe it was just another part of his withdrawal into himself after his mother had died.

"Good luck on the field." Hojo said brightly over the call of the seargent in charge of them, saying that they would soon be landing into their first battle in Italy. Inuyasha felt a nervous trill in his stomach as adrenaline began pumping as fast as his heart. This was his first time in battle, no matter that he was the best at fighting in the legion of men he was trained with.

In war, he had heard, it didn't matter how good you were at what. In the end, it was 'kill or be killed'. He was good at one-on-one, and maybe even two-on-one, but he had never faced an entire army before. He imagined that if you took a second to think about your actions, that you were immidiately killed.

He wasn't scared, not even nervous. That's what he told himself until the commanding officer shouted that they were almost upon the drop off point. He ignored the fast beating of his heart and his heightened breathing.

The tension in the air built itself considerably as each solider concentrated on the rough landing ahead. The commanding officer had said that they were in for a rough landing, since this was a new route, efficiently cutting the American forces traveling time in half. But it was dangerous, considering the shores were controlled by the enemy.

They all had to make it out of the rafts and onto the shore, giving their ship time to escape enemy bombs. They would have to fight like hell to survive and join the other part of their group.

They all piled into their assigned rafts, Inuyasha ending up next to Hojo again, to his momentary displeasure. It really didn't matter, the spy just hoped that the boy wouldn't distract him while he was fighting in the battle. The boy would have to fend for himself...

The door to the outside opened to reveal a bland smoky sky, emboldened by an angry sea.

Each raft would be pushed off consequtively after the other, until finally the ship retreated, leaving the men in the rafts to fend for themselves. They were supposed to stay in the rafts until they got close enough to the shore to walk or swim the rest of the way with their heavy equipment.

Inuyasha felt himself feeling the anxious terror coursing through his veins, even though he wasn't even on this damn side of the war. There was still a chance that he could be killed, no matter his mission. And then what would he have ammounted to?

He shook his head and settled himself forcefully, pushing himself onto the task at hand, ignoring his pounding heart.

The raft's were pushed out at the commanding officer's order; and with a loud splash, Inuyasha found himself at the forefront of the battle.

(Flashback)

_"Agent Takashi, we do not expect you to come back alive." Commander Sesshoumaru turned from the window to look directly into Inuyasha's eyes._

_Inuyasha couldn' t help but notice the lack of emotion in his superior's eyes. The commander had never been known to show much love or worry for his soliders, not even if they were his own kin..._

_"Your mission is solely to inspire your fellow nisei to rise up against the white devil's commanding them and do as much damage as you can."_

_Inuyasha didn't move, he didn't flinch; even being told that he was expected to die didn't bother him much. He didn't have anything to live for anyway... Nothing to come back to here in Japan, except a nearly empty house and a rock garden. He wasn't supposed to care about anything, so he had been trying not to._

_"You have your mission, now you may go and prepare. Dismissed." The commander sat down at his desk and began to shuffle through papers piled off to the side. Inuyasha stood up to leave, not making any eye contact with his... superior._

_"Little brother?" Inuyasha turned sharply at the name and glanced at his half-brother, who once again looked up from his desk._

_"Instead of wasting your life trying to come back, Make your death's ending worth our while." He sneered slightly and then went back to his papers, signaling to Inuyasha that he was done._

_Inuyasha turned once again and walked stiffly out of Sesshoumaru's office, keeping his eyes straight ahead of him. He was just told that he was expected to die... That they wanted him to die_

_He felt nothing, He could feel nothing... Nothing at all... He chanted in his mind quietly, pushing away any emotion his heart was dragging up from the dirt where he had buried it..._

_He felt nothing..._

(End flashback)

They had made it to the land now, struggling ashore with all of their equipment, not to mention their wet clothes. All the while dodging bullets and watching for mines planted in the ground beneath them.

Inuyasha panted as he trotted forward, bent slightly to make himself seem a smaller target. Hojo followed him closely, apparently deciding that his best bet was with the man he knew best in the group. Inuyasha didn't mind as much as he thought he would. Hojo covered him as he moved from rock to rock, while he covered hojo as the boy followed him. It was safer than being alone...

Although the boy, after this, would probably think they were friends or something... Oh great...

He concentrated instead on his objective, reaching the rocks where the enemy was shooting from. As soon as they cleared the beach of the minimal enemy force, they could join the men waiting for them just beyond the beach. Then they could join the main force, and he could get on with his job.

His adrenaline pumped his body for each quick movement, watching out of the corner of his eye as he moved for his fellow soliders and the weapons aiming for them. This was part of his plan... He covered for them, taking down their enemies for them so that they would trust him. So that when he told them his intentions, they would trust him more than the American pigs they were fighting for.

He looked back at Hojo, frowning because the boy had stopped. He checked back with their enemies and made sure none of them were directly aiming for him, making a mad dash back to where the boy had stopped.

"Hojo! What the hell is wrong with you?" He shouted over the noise of guns going off and cannons firing over his head. When the boy didn't answer but with a grunt, falling to his knees. Inuyasha knelt down beside him, seeing a small dark red stain moving slowly down the boys torso.

"Shit!" He swore, immidiately looking around for help. He knew he couldn't leave the boy behind... The boy needed help, or else he would die. Inuyasha knew he couldn't let that happen. Maybe the boy was annoying, maybe he wasn't yet on the japanese side; but he was still wounded, and right next to the spy at the moment. And that seemed enough for Inuyasha...

"Don't..." Hojo grunted in pain, looking up at Inuyasha with a labored glaze that Inuyasha was sure wasn't good news, in his eyes. He seemed unable to breathe right, coughing violently

"Just leave me..." He gasped as he looked up; surprising the spy with sight of blood trickling out of his mouth. Inuyasha looked back once more to see if anyone was coming to help.

Guess not...

"No way kid." Inuyasha growled, hoisting the wounded boy to his feet, using himself as support so that they could both walk in the direction that their companions had gathered. The rest of the troop had noticed the straggler, like Inuyasha and Hojo, and they provided cover fire for them, allowing them a little more safety while they struggled towards the group.

He REALLY hoped that he didn't get shot because of this. Then he wouldn't be able to acomplish anything but to end the mission, and he knew the military of Japan would not be happy... It would be a lot easier if he didn't have to dodge bullets every other second. But then, he was in war. Your enemy didn't wait for you to toddle over to join your main force, they took their chances and shot.

As far as Inuyasha could tell, they were sure as hell taking their chances.

"Almost there." Inuyasha grunted as the sweat rolled down his face, straining to go as fast as he could go with the boy, who was quiet except for his moans of pain. Two other soliders jogged towards them, intending to help.

Suddenly, the spy felt a blinding pain, coming from his leg. Ripping through it with the force that could only be a bullet. He fell to his knees, screaming in pain as both he and Hojo fell to the sand. This was it... What he feared; What he had taught himself not to fear. It was happening right before his very eyes.

"Hold on!" One of the soliders shouted, pciking up speed and deciding to give up watching for mines.

Inuyasha gripped the sand with a hard ferocity, groaning as he became accurately aware of his surroundings.

He could make it... If he just tried hard enough, he could do it... He could survive.

Ten feet in front of him, lay a mine. It was hidden well, with only part of it showing from beneath the sand.

He looked up, realizing that the solider coming his way was about to step on it. The solider had no idea, with his eyes focused on the two wounded men.

"Shit! Stop!" He screamed, before throwing himself and Hojo as far away as he could from the mine, turning himself away from it and crawling with panic as far as he could get before the solider stepped on it, realizing too late what he had set off.

It was silent for a second, before an explosion ripped through the solider and engulfed Inuyasha and Hojo, Throwing them roughly twenty feet away. Suddenly, the only possible comprehension Inuyasha could make in his mind was basted with pain ripping through it. It was the most incredibly mind-blowing agony that he felt, laying there suddenly burned on the beach.

His violet eyes bored into the gray sky, losing focus as the pain engulfed his senses.

The only thing Inuyasha thought, as he blacked out, losing conscieosness from the pain; was about his mother, seeing her face as he lost his grip into an unconscous void. Her face as she had smiled at him, all of the days she had been with him.

'I'm coming mom...'

(end)

Authors note: I know! I know! I'm terrible, leaving you on a cliffie in the first chapter! I should be starved of chocolate for a year! (Not that I'm suggesting you try to withhold my chocolate!).

Whew! This is probably the longest chapter I've written, probably the best too! It took me a week to write this, coupling with doing research and modifying my characters. If my chapters keep being so long, my beta (Starting chapter 2 of this story and the gardener) will try to kill me for sure...!

Oh well...

But! This authoress has done her research! I looked up a bunch of stuff on the internment camps and took out a few books to scour for more info on the 442nd regiment and the internment camps. Although I still have yet to look at army tactics and policies... I figured this is good enough for the first chapter. If anyone has any info to contribute, I'd be glad to include it in my research and use it to better my accuracy in this story.

I hope you like it, and find it a worthwhile read for a first chapter. While it may be shorter than most chapter stories, it will definently include longer chapters like this. Believe me, I know how much short chapters can annoy people. But I also ask that you give me time to do as much as I can with each chapter... With school back on, I might have less time than usual. But that probably won't matter, since I have no life other than my band, school, and writing... (sigh)

ZELDAGURL'S FAVORITE LYRICS-

"Every drop of flame light's a candle in the memory of the one who lived inside my skin!"

-Audioslave, Shadow on the sun

Toodles!


	2. Chapter 2

Dancing with the devil

Chapter two

By Zeldagurl

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha, I'm just obsessed with him.

(Begin)

Everything was black... His body, it hurt so much; He could barely feel anything beside the pain. His thoughts barely consisted of anything, besides registering his blindingly numb body, deadened either from pain or drugs. Where was he?

He reverted to an animal like state, knowing only his racing heart beat and the panic in his head.

The facts were there staring him in the face with a bright intensity of truth. He was cold, and the air he breathed around him was still with a sickening dampness. He resisted the urge to gag at the toxic smell that corroded his senses.

Was he dead?

He felt numb in his lower body, but everywhere else seemed as though it was on fire, flaring in a violent protest as he shifted his arm slightly.

"Is he bad...?" A voice, weak with strife and sounded from somewhere above him. Who was there? Was it his mother...?

Who was it?

He opened his eyes slightly, seeing only a blur of shapes and colors, unable to register in his mind. The light blinded him. Was he in heaven?

He found it hard to believe, even when his mind was going quickly from basic question to question.

His vision focused on one blurry face, centered above him, surrounded by light. It was a woman with worry written all over her face as her eyes met his in an instant; her black hair spilling over her shoulders in a fall of silk. She held his eyes with hers, smiling through her worry with a tired smile.

"You'll be okay..." She whispered with a beautifully sweet voice, like a bell, ringing in the darkness around him. It was such a basically beautiful promise, and a calming reassurance that made his mind still.

A voice came from somewhere else near him, saying something that, at the moment, Inuyasha couldn't understand...

All he felt was the pain throughout his body. Although it was lessening at the thought of the woman, no... The angel's beautiful face.

He felt a cool presence on his face that he swore was her hand. His fearful thinking calmed some by her touch. He smiled weakly at the feeling of comfort that emanated from that hand. He didn't remember deserving this... Ever.

Before he knew it, he was falling back into the blackness of oblivion that he had come out of before. As his eyes slipped closed, he heard her speak again.

"I'm here..." She whispered.

He slipped back into the black abyss.

(Interlude end)

It was some time later that he woke up, surrounded by darkness once again; but this time, he could feel the world around him in a blur of his recovering senses. One of his legs was numb, and the rest of his body felt hot, as though he had been through the fires of hell and come back alive.

His memory was fuzzy; thinking back to just before he had blacked out, and when he had awoken for a sore moment. He saw Hojo's pained face, and remembered a lot of pain and light.

A light breeze drafted from the entrance of the tent, cooling his burning skin for a wistful moment before dwindling into nothing. The bed beneath him was covered with scratchy cotton that smelled strongly of bleach, he was surprised that he had been able to ignore the strong smell even in sleep.

There were a few other men in his tent, which was lucky in itself, he guessed. It would be hell to be surrounded by the allied forces pitiful dying and wounded while being wounded himself.

But it really didn't matter. He was still wounded, and he was still stuck here until he was able to heal and rejoin the army and influence his comrades. Only then would he be able to complete his mission and therefore be able to rest on his laurels, unless the allied Japanese turned him in for being a spy.

Then he would just have to settle for dying.

Tough choice...

He stared at the canvas colored tent ceiling above him, reciting and remembering in his head the way he had imagined dying. Since his superior, older half brother had already basically told him to die, he intended to. Then at least he would be thought of as a hero in Japanese society, dying to resist the white devils and their war.

He would be interrogated mercilessly, being scoured for any information the Americans might need to defeat his country. But he would tell nothing, because he knew nothing. And he would resist them proudly, still acting as though he might have something they would want; even though he really wouldn't.

Then they would kill him, and the game would be over; he wouldn't have lost. He would prove to everyone that he was indeed more than they ever thought he'd be. Then he could be satisfied, Inuyasha loved the thought of it. Although, he didn't know what would come after the satisfaction... He had never gotten past feeling like he was worthy to think about what would happen afterwards... It didn't matter.

He could be dead, or he could be in jail.

Inuyasha wasn't aiming very high for any kind of reward anyway. He wouldn't be worthy enough for heaven, no matter what he did to save Japan.

Now the game still had to be played, and in order to find that winning hand, he would have to play hard and always be on his guard.

He closed his eyes and sighed heavily, ignoring his sore body and listening to the sounds around him. He could hear voices outside the canvas tent, and he could hear the wind rustling the material of his current lodgings. The man who lay five feet away on another bed groaned quietly, shifting and creaking the bed until he could find a comfortable position on the thin mattress.

He caught the sound of a melodic voice, approaching nearer from behind the tent. He wondered where he had heard that voice before; it was so familiar, and yet it didn't bring to mind anyone he had ever known back in Japan. The only person who had possessed a voice similar to this one had been his mother, but it still wasn't the same.

And then that face popped into his mind... That face that had been surrounded by light...

The angel.

The flaps of the tent opened slowly and a small teenage girl slipped inside, carrying with her a large roll of gauze. She headed towards the man farthest away, checking the clip board posted at the end of each bed. She changed the bandages on two or three of them before coming to his bed. She walked slowly, her fatigue weighing her down visibly as she held onto the flimsy metal footboard of his bed.

She picked up his clipboard and scanned it for a moment, sighing and putting it down again before moving to begin changing his bandages.

Inuyasha was at a loss of what to do. He wanted to talk to her; he wanted to be able to look in those blue eyes and to feel once again, the comfort that had made him relax into sleep before. And it seemed, now that he realized the truth, he couldn't relax again; because she, although she was a woman, was his enemy. He couldn't compromise his mission.

"Oh! You're awake." His eyes flew to hers as she brightened with that same smile from before. He felt a small sense of comfort trickle into him, though he didn't quite understand why. He knew now that she wasn't an angel, but one of the enemy's nurses; but that still didn't change the image in his mind. Her face illuminated by light, with a tired and beautiful, and maybe even comforting smile on her face.

He told himself to push the image away...

"Yeah..." He croaked back at her, wishing she would leave so that he could forget that heavenly image from his memory.

"I'm Lieutenant Higurashi Kagome, I'm your nurse until you're wound heals." She said quietly, warily glancing at the other men, making sure to lower her voice so that she wouldn't wake them.

"So what's your name?" He knew she wasn't an angel, he could comprehend that she was human just like him. It had just been a simple mistake, a trick of the light. He didn't need to get sentimental over one girl. That's what he kept saying to himself every time he thought of her looking into his eyes and smiling like she had.

"It's none of your business." He answered gruffly, struggling to sit up a little among the scratchy cotton sheets.

"Be careful." She stepped forward, placing her hands on his shoulders and helping him slowly. He noticed that she was careful not to touch him roughly, seeing as he was burned (He had come to this conclusion while scratching his forearm.)

"S'alright" He grunted.

"You know I can just look up your name on the registry sheet, right?" She said flatly, smiling widely at him as he caught his breath.

"It wouldn't be me." She frowned.

He mentally cursed after saying that; if she was at all smart, she could easily become suspicious of him with a comment like that.

She stepped back and sighed, closing her eyes. He wasn't sure if she had even really thought about the odd thing he had just said. Maybe he had gotten lucky and had gotten a really dumb nurse; or at least a very dense one.

She coughed softly and covered her mouth, her blue eyes peeking at him from behind a curtain of black bangs. After a brief raised eyebrow, and a tired sigh that wiped the smile off of her face, she spoke once more.

"Is there anything you need?"

"No." He said quietly, keeping his eyes directed toward the ground. He was kind of surprised that she wasn't calling him on his comment. Was she stupid? Or just overly tired? He was almost counting himself lucky that he had gotten a stupid (possibly tired) nurse.

"If you say so..." She gave him a wary look and turned away, leaving the clipboard where it had rested before. She walked to the door warily.

"I'm sorry for bothering you. Get some sleep." She walked out of the canvas flaps and left him alone.

He expelled a slow breath and fell backwards onto his mattress, staring at the off-yellow ceiling and thinking about the woman he'd just met.

She looked so tired... So world worn, so accepting in no special way. Kind of like him... They were alike, yet they were different. But he just couldn't tell how deep the similarities went.

Or maybe she was just tired...

(Switch)

Kagome walked slowly to where her lodgings were. She shared a tent with Sango and two other nurses. It was wet, slimy, damp, buggy and gross. Not to mention dirty and smelly from the assortment of wounded men nearby. Kagome could pick out every single thing wrong with where she slept, from the itchiness of the blanket, to the cold drafts that brought even more of the stench into the tent from time to time.

Kagome had come from a middle class family in hatoma, California. They hadn't lived in the best comfort money could buy, but they had obviously lived a lot better than the disgusting state the tent was in. She trudged faithfully toward the nurses tents, rolling her eyes as she imagined the squabbling that would occur in just a little while over whether they should keep the tent flap open or tied down.

She didn't expect there to be perfect peace; you can't expect that when you throw together a bunch of women who are probably all prone to PMS. Everyone was a little upset at the conditions, but they eventually got used to it. Kagome just wanted quiet and a warm bed to sleep in for the night.

Soon enough though, she arrived at the tent, moving the large flap aside so that she could enter. It was quiet and dark at the moment, seeing as her other tent mates were still working for another half hour. She quickly changed out of her nurse clothes and into her nightclothes, tidying up the tent as she did so.

By the time she was in her cot, ready to sleep, it seemed nearly time for her fellow nurses to arrive. She guessed it wasn't a problem, seeing as she wasn't really able to sleep well anyway. But she still wanted to try and make the effort anyway. She closed her eyes; picturing anything but the day she had been through in order to calm herself.

No bloody men, no dying men, no sad smiles or tears or death. That's what she wanted out of her mind.

Okay, calm? How about that guy she had just met? Not that he was very calming, but at least he was somewhat normal in the wounded solider department. He was very... She didn't know if cute was really the word. Maybe he was just interesting? It was something about his eyes; the cold feeling she got from them, and yet the small sense of need behind the cold. Of course he was kind of handsome as young Japanese men came, but it seemed to her that his looks weren't his distinguishing features; maybe he was more.

Or maybe she was just kidding herself...

Maybe she was just being too mysterious in going about him and his violet eyes, maybe she was just imagining it; but she still thought that he was at the very least a little different than the other men she took care of.

He was rude, and cold, and hadn't acted like half of the other soldiers who, when they weren't dying, seemed intent on charming the dress off her. It was just so unusual that he would act so... unenthusiastic. Not that she really wanted him to be trying to snare her into his romantic trap or anything.

He was just different.

Kagome imagined that cold face, and found herself wanting to see what it'd be like for him to smile. She imagined that it would be a site to see. If he really acted that way all the time, then she guessed he wouldn't turn out to be the smiling type of guy.

She wanted to see him smile, and she wanted to be the one who might make him smile.

Kagome didn't know why she was feeling like rising to the challenge now. Usually, Kagome was the one who worked well under stress; the one who got the job done no matter what. She hadn't been the aggressive competitive girl at school; she had admired that girl from afar and done her fractions. Yeah, good old dependable Kagome...

Kagome seemed to be the one who rarely did anything perfectly. When she was depended upon for a job well done, she usually only managed a mild 'good job'. The thing that often redeemed her was the fact that she was dedicated and often refused to give up.

She had never gone after boys at her school, simply because they weren't interested in her. She didn't presume to know why; she just kind of understood that there were better choices out there for them to pick. While at the worst of times a situation like that could hurt terribly; at the best of times it kind of relieved her because she didn't have to deal with the stress of having a boyfriend. She guessed that it was a kind of blessing in disguise.

Apparently wounded soldiers liked all females equally when they were lying, stinking in a damp bed.

Kagome felt the frown cross her features and opened her eyes.

She wasn't going to sleep tonight; she had known that before she had even lain down. She didn't know why she even tried any more... Sleep came to her when she positively needed it in order to function for another ten minutes.

She couldn't remember when she had started being like this with sleeping. When she was a little girl and even a young teenager, she had loved to sleep. It seemed like she hadn't been sleeping for forever, but in reality it had been only a few months.

In a fit of frustration, she sat up, looking around the tent at a loss of what she could possibly do. She couldn't make herself sleep; she couldn't make herself okay again. She couldn't make herself understand what was happening to her.

People didn't go through what she had gone through; and even if they had, they would never talk about it or even appear to be bothered by it. They kept their heads down and moved on with life. Now that she was the way she was, she couldn't understand how they could stand it.

She moved through life as though it was pain, everything she did being affected by her stupid feelings and by what had happened. She couldn't even walk down a hallway without being afraid. She was so afraid to let go and trust, to expect anyone to understand. Yet she knew no one knew how...

And 'no one' included herself...

She crumpled within herself, holding her head in her hands and wondering how she had ever become so tormented to begin with. How hell could engulf her, even when she had only been thinking about trying to sleep.

She was free to move, but trapped within herself; stuck on a past hurt that wouldn't let her go

Trapped...

(Switch)

"Dr. Miroku...?" A sole nurse walked briskly to the doctor who was currently examining some odd paperwork. He looked up and smiled wearily, his eyes twinkling despite his obvious fatigue.

"Ah, the lovely Sango has decided to grace me with her company. What might I be able to do for you?" He chuckled mirthfully as she frowned at him.

"Nothing perverted, if that's what you had in my mind..." She raised an eyebrow at the seated man, who grinned shamelessly, setting down his paper work to stand.

"I have a fond appreciation for the female form; I can't see anything wrong with that." He shrugged.

"Miroku, I'll have a problem with your 'appreciation' until you learn to keep your hands to yourself, and you know that." She folded her arms across her chest, whether for protection or just to look mad, he couldn't tell.

"I need to talk to you about Kagome." She said, deciding to end his light flirtations so that she could address the real reason she had come to see him.

"What about her?" The doctor picked up his paperwork once more from the makeshift table, browsing through it while keeping his attention on the young nurse.

"Have you noticed how terrible she looks?"

"I have, but I haven't been looking into it." He glanced up at her with his eyebrows raised.

"Why not?" She frowned more deeply at him.

"Well, we're all kind of looking that way lately aren't we? Besides I don't have time to check up on the nurses with all the patients I have to handle."

"You certainly have enough time to 'check' all of them out." She gave him a flat look; he could certainly tell she was becoming irritated.

"Well, what seems to be the problem?" He said patiently, knowing to count his blessings and not to infuriate the woman before him. The only thing more fearsome and terrifying than death was, of course, the wrath of a woman.

"She doesn't sleep at night, and barely eats. She's not half as talkative as she was in the beginning and she also drags her feet all day. She breaks down every time a patient dies on her and she seems to be developing a cough. She also has times when she can't keep up with me and has to hang onto something to stand." Sango counted each thing off with her fingers, barely having to think of another of Kagome's afflictions before listing the next one.

Miroku was a little less than flabbergasted as he comprehended the problems in one gulp. He had had no idea that something could be so wrong with both Sango's and his friend. In fact he was kind of insulted that he hadn't looked into it after all.

He really did need to mind his beautiful angelic darling nurses, no matter how many patients he might have. It wasn't like a man was surrounded by beautiful women every day... Plus he had no competition to deal with or fear punishment from when he pursued his beauties. He counted himself as a very lucky man, so he guessed it was the least he could do.

"I think I'll switch her to taking care of the recovery patients. Maybe that will do something about her fear of dying men. But I'm afraid there's nothing I can do beyond that."

"You can't treat her or anything?" Sango pleaded desperately.

"I can't give her anything for her sleeping issues, and I can only suggest rest for her cough and weakness. Normally I would use whatever I have, but I can't. Its wartime, I can't afford to be giving any medicine to anyone who isn't supposed to be receiving it." He shook his head to emphasize his point.

"But we have to do something to help her. Miroku, you don't see how hard she's trying just to be able to stand up. She thinks that she can just keep working herself harder than everyone else, but it's making her sick!" She ran a hand through her loose brown hair, her eyes flickering from place to place.

"We can only pray that she will recover from whatever seems to be bothering her." He sighed, laying a hand on her shoulder, meaning to calm her as best he could.

Sango couldn't help but notice that he looked so incredibly tired. Of what? She could probably guess or assume...

"I'll assign her to the new patient from the beach and we'll see where it goes from there." He let go of her shoulder, walking slowly away with his paperwork. Sango walked the opposite way, looking back at him with a sad look on her face.

She watched him until he turned into another part of the large tent, so that she could no longer see him.

As a nurse, she had come here from the camps, same as Kagome. And she dealt with all of the problems that had been forced on her people with a grace that surprised even her. She had always been the type of person who went with the flow, and only stood up if something she loved was threatened.

Sango had met Kagome long ago, when the both of them were in the first grade; and Sango had befriended Kagome almost immediately. Since then they had been good friends, and had stuck together; even deciding to become nurses for the war to get out of the camps and stay together.

That was of course when she had met Miroku...

She had to admit that she actually kind of liked him, despite his lechery and tendencies to go after every short skirt that came into view. He was interesting, which was probably the reason that Sango liked him. He was deeper than he seemed; but he liked to pass himself off as the adorable idiot who liked girls a little too much.

It was cute... But kind of annoying...

The thing that she noticed the most was the way he always acted cheerful, almost able to take anything in his hands that was broken and try to mold it back together again. He joked around, and flirted with all the girls, he even groped when he got the chance.

But he was still not as he appeared; Sango had the feeling that was the only one who ever knew.

He walked forward in life with good humor, but he didn't walk without sadness and great pain. Maybe that was the toll being a war doctor took on him. He couldn't advise Kagome in the matter of being sad over the people who died in front of her, because he struggled with it too.

Along with the weight of destiny and the pull of the past, he stood, tipping where life tried pushing him over.

It was that quiet bravery to face life that probably made Sango like him so much. She went to him for Kagome's problems, and while he didn't have much of a solution on hand; she still admired him in the same way.

To Sango, he could only be a hero that he'd never see within himself, and nothing less...

Except for the perverted part of him; that, she could do without...

Authors note: All right!!! I'm on a roll! I put a one-shot up this morning, and now I finally finished the second chapter of this story! Awesome!

Alrighty, so, this chapter wasn't as hard to write as I thought it would be. I only got stuck at one part, which only took a bit of planning to resolve. I'm going to take a break for a week or so from this story so that I can work on The Gardener; I also need to develop the plot a little more before I go any further. But don't worry, it won't take too long!

If anyone has any ideas for any one-shots, I'd be glad to look into it to see if I can do it.

Also, I was thinking of writing a Halloween story, so I'm looking for suggestions; what should Inuyasha and Kagome be? I couldn't think of anything good, so I'm leaving it up to you guys.

Alright, well thanks for reading once again! I will wait for your reviews with shiny eyes and quivering lips!

Quote:

"Pain is nothing; it is death that concerns me, and my fate as a mere mortal."

-Miroku


	3. Chapter 3

Dancing with the Devil

Chapter 3

By Zeldagurl

Disclaimer: If I owned Inuyasha, wouldn't you be seeing this story on TV instead of reading it?

Authors note: Thank you so much for the feedback from those who reviewed. I really value your opinions and they really do give me the fuel (not literally) to write.

I guess it's just a good time of year, seeing as Thanksgiving was here and Christmas/New years are just around the corner. So hopefully, I'll be getting a lot more done in terms of writing. With all the extra vacation time I get, I can't help but get on my computer and rock out to whatever I feel like listening to (Evanescence, Audioslave, and some very interesting show tunes... Good Lord...), which means I'll usually end up writing.

I hope you guys keep reviewing, and that you like this chapter, fresh off the press... Give or take a week...

(Begin)

He hadn't slept all that well the night before.

After that nurse had left, he laid awake on his side, staring at the next bed over from him with a sick devotion. The man in the bed gasped like a fish out of water all night, and had finally become silent sometime around sunrise. So obviously, he hadn't been able to sleep very well at all.

His thoughts went everywhere while he laid in the stillness of the night. They wandered a path that he had trodden a thousand times; he knew it by heart.

He thought of his mother first, as he always did when he was alone. He remembered her smile, and the sound of her voice, somehow telling him how much she loved him. He remembered what it felt like to be loved and protected, and he wistfully wished to go back in time; if only just to see her face and to hear her tell him those three words.

For Inuyasha, grief was a funny thing. It had been at least eleven years since his mother had died, and he was still crippled by the fact that she wasn't there, even though he had gotten used to the idea soon enough. People kept telling him to move on with his life, that it was what she would have wanted. After a while, he got sick of being comforted and being told to be strong; so he stopped showing his feelings in front of people.

Closing his eyes, he thought back to when he was just a little pup, barely nine years old, when the police had called and come to his house, nearly frightening the wits out of their old maid (Who was in charge of him when his mother was out). She had led the police chief to him, getting him up out of bed and making him come stand in the hallway with her while the police chief blathered on about things that he couldn't understand. He was cranky from being woken, so he didn't listen all that well, missing out on the details that were stated by the Police chief.

He had been glad when the man had decided to leave with all of his loud and scary men, and he was glad that he could finally go back to bed. He had wished that his mother was there to put him back to sleep, and so he asked where she was, not understanding when the maid knelt down to bring her face level with his.

She told him that his mother wouldn't be coming home that night. That she wouldn't be coming home ever again. She told him that she had been taken away by a very bad man, and that the police were working very hard to find that man and bring him to face the law.

The only part that he had really understood was the part about his mother, never coming home, and being taken away by a man. It had stayed in his mind long after the maid told him and answered all of his questions, giving him a comforting hug when she was all done explaining.

Inuyasha allowed himself to be put to bed, but he didn't sleep. He sat up and thought, using his little mind to think about the fact that his mommy was gone. That he would never see her again... He thought, and felt sad; the shock buffering the pain that he wouldn't understand until he was much older. And he experienced anger, at the man who had dared to take her away from him. He wanted to hurt the man who had hurt his mommy, but he was too small, too weak to even stand a chance of doing anything.

But he had wanted to, so badly, and so desperately. He still did, even as an adult as he was now. Secretly he still wanted to seek out the man that had made his life hell... He knew only a name, only a face, only a hatred that seemed animal-like in the fact that it was the deepest kind of hate you could experience.

A nurse wandered by, carrying a clipboard and writing on it, keeping a thoughtful look on her face as she walked. He peered to look if it was the angel almost unconsciously, finding himself disappointed when he realized that it wasn't her.

'Too bad, Inuyasha, she's not there. You don't need to see her anyway.' He thought to himself, frowning at the nurse when she placed the clipboard at the base of his bed. He didn't like being in this strange place without anyone he knew. He was kind of wishing that the angel-nurse would come around and say hi and annoy him or something. He had nothing to do all day and all night beside stare at the tent wall, and he desperately wanted something to do.

He knew that it wasn't healthy for him or his mission to brood too much on the past. Although it was a favorite past-time of his; he didn't want to be doing it all the time...

He grunted softly and snuggled deeper into his bed, hating the way the sheets scratched his sensitive skin and wishing that he could do something. But he closed his eyes and waited patiently for sleep to claim him from the surreal dream of reality.

And he slept...

(Switch)

Kagome stepped out of the tent, breathlessly straightening her uniform and rubbing some color into her cheeks as she walked.

They hadn't woken her up, leaving her some cheesy note about knowing that she needed her rest. The moment she'd woken and found it lying on her bag, she shot out of bed, pulling things on haphazardly and rushing to be ready in order not to be any later than she was. No matter if she was tired, she needed to work to save lives! She absolutely couldn't do that while sleeping in the tent, her friends should have known that.

She had to pull her weight just like them, and she wanted to... But they were making it so damn hard by not waking her up (She hadn't heard the bugle)...

Kagome hardly had time to look up from straightening her uniform when she walked smack dab into someone who seemed built like a freight train. She fell backwards, looking up in shock as she fell, only to be caught in the arms of the person she had run into.

She caught her balance quickly and righted herself, looking up at the person with an apologetic blush painted on her face. It was a man, with blue eyes, and longish hair and sharp features. His face seemed to have a stubborn roguish look to it, kind of like someone who was used to getting their way all of the time. Kagome didn't usually like being around people like that, seeing as they were bossy and all; but she couldn't stop her heart from skipping a beat when she looked into his eyes and he smiled.

But within seconds she remembered herself, and stepped back, avoiding his eyes and holding her arms around herself in a conservative manner. Her heart beat fast in apprehension, remembering that he was a man, and that she was scared of men now. She felt herself trembling...

"I'm sorry miss, are you alright?" He said, peering into her eyes in concern.

"Yes, I'm fine. I'm really sorry about running into you like that." She said quietly, blushing and avoiding his eyes, hoping that soon she could get away from him as soon as possible.

"No miss, it was entirely my fault." He smiled charmingly, and Kagome looked up for a second; being unable to resist, she smiled back.

"Can I apologize by getting your dinner for you tonight? Then I can maybe apologize more thoroughly to you." He offered amicably, raising his eyebrows for emphasis.

"Maybe some other time." She began walking past him, keeping her eyes on the ground. He caught her arm as she passed forcing her to look up at him, as he smiled at her apologetically. She shied away from him but still stopped.

"What's' your name miss, if I may ask? My name is Kouga, Corporal of the 442 regiment."

"It's Kagome, Lieutenant." She began to walk away again, moving faster so that he wouldn't talk to her again.

"Thank you Miss Kagome!" He called after her, to which she sped up her speed of walking to the point that she was almost running.

She hurriedly got to her assigned tent and got report from the nurse that she was taking over for, apologizing profusely for making the nurse wait a half an hour over the pick-up time. She then began gathering supplies for the rounds in the tent that she would soon have to conduct. Just as soon as she was done, she felt a hand press on her shoulder and she looked back as it removed itself.

"Dr. Miroku." She raised an eyebrow, turning around completely so that she could look the clown in the eye (and protect all of the obvious parts, because he wasn't called a lecher for nothing). She glad that he was being sensitive so as not to grope her; she really didn't want to deal with the way she knew that she would react. Besides the fact that Sango liked him, and it would be just plain wrong...

"Yes, Kagome, you look lovelier and lovelier every day." He smiled a cheesy smile, raising his eyebrows up and down, seeming to be tying to make her laugh. Instead she smiled back, sighing in an exasperated expulsion of breath before going back to loading her supplies onto a cart.

"You must have gone blind." She muttered to herself.

"No Kagome, I am neither blind nor crazy." He said, throwing a meaningful look at Sango passing by, who simply responded by sticking her tongue out at him and passing on.

"Ah women..." He sighed, sobering himself to talk seriously.

"Kagome, I just came to tell you that I've switched you over to the patients along the wall over there who came in from the beach a few days ago."

She turned to look at him and furrowed her brow.

"But I thought you said you needed me for surgery? You said you were short of help so you'd need me to do a lot of the heavy stuff."

"Oh, well, I changed my mind." He said easily, turning away from the supply station and moving to continue down the aisle. Kagome rolled her eyes and began pushing her cart into the aisle and towards the ten patients on the far wall. Sango had to have had something to do with this. All she had to do was ask the perverted doctor and he would roll over and die for her. Kagome would simply have a talk with Sango later...

She looked at where she was headed, eyeing the men that she was now in charge of. All of them seemed only mildly feverish or injured, and she couldn't find a completely fatal injury anywhere in sight... It had said something in the report about a man dying that morning, but she couldn't see any signs of anything that was very strongly wrong with any of them.

Yeah, Sango HAD to have had something to do with this...

She sighed, and went to the first person, talking cheerfully to him and checking his dressing, deciding that he didn't need to be changed until a little later. She marked it on her list and asked if she could do anything to help him be more comfortable, he smiled and stared at her; not really replying. Kagome simply smiled back and nervously patted his shoulder saying that she would be back later.

Things went on like that, as she checked the other eight patients, their reactions varied, and she simply went on to the next person. She did this until she came to the last person, who lay on his side facing the wall. Kagome immediately picked up his clipboard and looked at it, checking to see if it was accurate in the way it named his wounds. Gunshot to the leg and burns, yep... It seemed to be in order.

"Sir...?"

He lifted his head and looked back at her, his eyes widening once he saw her. He quickly lay back down and looked away. Kagome took the look as a sign that he knew that she was there and made to proceed with the check.

"Still trying to find out my name, huh?"

"Huh?" She said intelligently and stopped what she was doing.

"You were trying to get me to talk last night, remember?"

Kagome thought back and remembered that there was a man who wouldn't give her his name. She had thought about him long after she had gotten off duty...

"Oh yeah... I remember." She smiled in faint recognition.

He was silent for a moment and stared at the wall, seeming to be trying to bore holes in the discolored canvas walls of the tent. She reached out to check his dressing and discovered that it would have to be changed very soon. She reached for her gauze on the cart and for some ointment that she was going to have to spread on him (for the burns).

"It's Inuyasha." He said quietly, catching her slightly off guard. She looked at his still form and shook her head after a few seconds, deciding to continue with the redressing.

"Hmm..." She answered, opening the ointment and slathering it in her hands, gently bringing it down to touch his skin. He flinched and shivered at her touch, seeming to huddle deeper into himself as she began spreading the medicine around on his skin.

"Sorry." She said apologetically, "I forgot to warn you that it might sting a little."

He looked back at her with an angry look in his eyes, pouting like an angry child.

"Aren't you supposed to do that? I mean, you ARE a nurse aren't you?"

She raised an eyebrow at him, continuing to rub in the ointment as she looked.

"You aren't very friendly are you?"

"Gee, how could you tell?" He said grumpily, crossing his arms across his chest.

"Lucky guess." She said thinly, feeling more like smacking the grumpy man more than dressing his wounds.

Both of them were silent after that while she worked. Kagome really didn't feel like getting into an argument with him over anything; seeing as she barely knew the guy as well as the fact that he was a poor old wounded solider, so it wouldn't have been fair if she spontaneously decided to pummel him for being an ass. Either way... She didn't have the energy to deal with him being like this, so she decided that maybe she should do a little negotiating. After all, the less trouble she had was less energy spent on trying to resolve trouble.

"Listen... Inuyasha, was it?"

"Hmm?" He grunted.

She sighed before continuing,

"I don't want to have to fight you every time I come over here, okay? I'm permanently assigned to your little glee club over here, so I think it might be best if we try to get along as best we can. I know you obviously don't like me; but for the sake of peace, can we try to get along?"

He turned over to look at her, giving her a view of his handsome chiseled face and his vibrant violet eyes. Her heart skipped a beat and she swallowed to regain control of herself.

"So you're assigned here for good?"

"Uh huh."

He turned back over and went back to boring holes in the wall with his eyes.

"Whatever."

She breathed slowly and finished spreading the ointment on him and his angry chapped burns and began to redress the gunshot wound. She tried to be gentle so that she wouldn't hurt him too badly when she got close. But to his credit, he didn't yelp or flinch once; Kagome was actually kind of surprised. In her experience, men and pain just did not mix. Most men yelped like babies and complained that she was being too rough on them when she was barely even touching anything; in which case she would immediately wrap their bandages a little tighter.

She turned and coughed quite often, violently clearing her lungs so that she could breathe normally. More than once, Inuyasha turned slightly to look at her, raising an eyebrow when she clutched her throat with one hand, trying to relieve the dull aching pain that plagued her whenever she coughed.

As soon as she was done, she packed up her supplies and left them sitting on the cart and she thought to herself. Miroku had said that these men were her only assignments and that meant that she had nothing to do for at least a half an hour. She looked over at the clock at the nursing station and saw that she had plenty of time until she got her lunch break.

So Kagome decided to sit with her patients, grabbing a chair and dragging it over to the nearest man; who, of course, just happened to be Inuyasha. She brought it and put it to rest against the unstable wall of the tent, setting it up to face Inuyasha, who was looking at her with a look that seemed of shock and disgust.

"What do you want?" He growled, scooting away from her as far as he possibly could in his fragile hospital bed.

"I have time before I have to change more bandages, so I'm spending it staring at you." She said, half sarcastically.

"You're weird."

"Yeah, I know."

He frowned at her and stared at her, blinking his large violet eyes every few seconds, as though he were analyzing her or something like that.

"What?" She pursed her lips, "Do I have something on my face?"

"No." He said stubbornly.

She sat back patiently and looked around for a moment. Watching Sango talking with Miroku off the side of the tent, somehow more out of her view than not. Miroku saw her watching the two of them and gave her a thumbs-up with a goofy grin plastered on his face. Kagome smiled to herself; judging from the degree of blush on Sango's face, he had just tried something perverted or something. Kagome also noted that he was sporting a deeply blue black eye on the right eye...

"So Inuyasha..." She said, turning back to the pouting man that she was now pestering, "Where do you come from?"

"Manzanar relocation camp." He said bluntly.

"And... Before that?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"Oh yeah, that's right, you aren't the friendliest solider around, are you." She sighed and tried again.

"Okay, how about some very basic things; since you don't feel inclined to tell me even where you come from."

"What do you mean?" He said cautiously, peering at her from beneath dark brown bangs that covered his forehead.

"You know... Like favorite foods? Favorite color?" She replied, raising her eyebrows for emphasis and sitting forward in her chair, folding her hands in her lap.

He was silent for a moment, and almost seemed as though he wasn't even going to grace her with an answer, until he spoke.

"And why do I have to tell you this?" He asked, seeming to be nervous and grumpy at the same time. Kagome smiled serenely in answer and closed her eyes.

"Because I'd like to know."

Her mind was screaming at her to step back, to calm down and to keep her distance. And normally she would have listened to it in order to avoid trouble with men altogether, but Kagome couldn't foresee any trouble by just talking to the guy. If he tried anything shady, than of course she would back off and mind her own business. But at the moment, she was curious about the man who seemed to be so different from every other man she had met.

"My favorite color is red, if you have to know." His rough voice broke her out of her thoughts and brought her back to the task at hand. She contemplated his answer for a moment, observing his curled up form and trying to make sense of why he would like red. It wasn't a very usual color to like... It was just that everyone was boring, and pretty much just liked blue and green. That was boring; especially since she herself liked

Green the most.

"That's kind of interesting. I like green." He rolled his eyes and then closed them, slowly tucking his hands closer to his body. He didn't look that interested in their conversation... Kagome didn't blame him. It wasn't like they were talking about anything life changing or anything... She looked over at the clock at the nursing station.

"Is that all?" He asked stiffly as she got up, realizing that it was time to change some bandages on the other men.

"Yeah... I guess that's it for now. I'll expect more during lunch." She said, grabbing her chair and bringing it back to the nursing station and smiling, holding her hand over her mouth as she coughed softly once more.

"So you're coming back?"

"You can bet your bottom on it." She said, almost unenthusiastically. She looked over into his face and his violet eyes, and detected a kind of hope within them. It was hard to explain without making it sound like a corny romance novel. She saw only for a moment, a light in his eyes, before he brought them down to rest elsewhere.

"Why not? I'm already burned and shot in the leg, what's wrong with putting another body part on the line?" He replied, dryly closing his eyes and signaling that he was done talking.

She smiled at the sentiment and began heading with her cart over to the first few men in the row that she was in charge of, and secretly looked forward to pestering Inuyasha during lunch. She didn't smile much in laughter these days; maybe Sango had been right in the fact that she had to let loose once in a while...

Just as long as she didn't make a habit of it anyway...

(switch)

"...I don't like geometry; it's hard and pointless since I'm probably never going to use it." Kagome sighed, chewing the last of her corn and washing it down with an audible gulp of her water.

"It may suck, but it doesn't mean that it's completely useless." Inuyasha argued back, forgetting his food, simply because he didn't want to taste any more terrible food from the mess hall unless he absolutely had to.

Kagome pushed her tray away and sat back in her chair, closing her eyes and folding her arms over her chest with an air of finality within her gestures and words.

They had only spent lunch and dinner together since they had really seriously started talking; and already they were arguing about the touchy subject of math...

"You aren't going to change my mind. So you shouldn't even bother." She set her mouth in a prim line.

He pouted himself, sitting stiffly in the bed and rolling his eyes at her sarcastically.

"Why do I have to argue with you about such stupid things?"

"Well, you could just ignore me."

"Who could ignore a whiny voice like yours?" He snapped, looking away; closing his eyes so as to seem that he was done with the conversation.

Secretly, he had thrived on trying to match her wit and coming up with remarks that made her unable to think of anything else to say.

It was funny to imagine for him, being so consumed by something that he wasn't able to escape inwardly by brooding to himself. He didn't have time to curl up within himself, simply because the woman wouldn't stop talking long enough to let him think clearly.

In fact, this was probably only the second time that he had warned himself not to become too friendly with her for the sake of the mission. But the thought had only come as a sort of passing warning at the back of his mind; being that they were pushed aside in order to be able to think of things to say to her odd queries and idea's.

It was also kind of surprising that his image and thoughts of how this woman would be like an angel were so completely wrong...

It wasn't as though she wasn't pretty or anything; because she was the absolute opposite of anything that might be associated with the word ugly. But she was different than the usual woman that he was used to being around.

She was feminine, yet she wasn't afraid to step outside her bounds as a woman; she didn't back down from any of his insults, or cry because he wasn't being nice to her. Inuyasha kind of respected that...

But there was also something different about her... Something that Inuyasha couldn't really pinpoint as much as put into many describing words that kind of didn't completely describe her.

World worn? Tired? Afraid? How could a woman like that be so pushy?

He saw a fear in her eyes; even beyond their arguments and their brash words exchanged. It was almost as though she was watching him for something. As though she was waiting for him to strike out at her...

He watched the way she kept herself tucked tightly to her chair, no matter what pose or expression she seemed to be in. She seemed to be afraid to move more than slightly or at least towards him. He watched her cough from time to time, and holding her hand to her throat as though she was in serious pain. She walked with a weariness that a normal young woman would never know...

Inuyasha couldn't help but wonder how she could be such an enigma...

He had lost his faith in people a long time ago. Going through life, keeping in mind that everyone had a motive to get their way. Knowing that everyone wanted money, wanted power, wanted control over every other human being to get their way. Men and women alike were like that to him... He found everyone selfish, cowardly, and hateful. And since he had formed that opinion about people, he had never found anyone that could possibly have a chance of proving him wrong.

He could never find someone that he couldn't predict, and that he couldn't shallowly understand.

And now... This woman; Whom he was only fascinated with because she had been the first face that he had seen in this bloody hospital that made him feel as though he could trust her.

Even though he was supposed to be sabotaging her mission...

Even though she was the enemy.

"Well Inuyasha... I'm going to go get these dishes to the mess hall. I'll be back in a while to change your bandages and stuff, okay?" She got up, grabbing their plates and utensils and moving slowly with them towards the tent entrance.

"Okay." He said quietly, watching her walk, and analyzing her, even after spending a substantial amount of time with her during the day.

He idly wondered if she was going to bend over and cough on the way to the mess hall. He wondered if someone would try to help her up, or see if she was okay...

He hoped that they would...

Inuyasha lay back in the bed, relaxing and closing his eyes, meaning to think of his mission and the next phase of his plan. But when he got down to being able to think without interruption; he found that he could only really think about her... Questions about her bombarded him, and piled up within him since he couldn't answer any of them.

He shook his head and frowned.

He HAD to concentrate on his mission. It was his life; it was the only thing his life was worth... He couldn't just stop within it and start thinking about a pretty girl.

That wasn't how it was supposed to be!

How could it be?

He watched through the flaps of the tent, as her diminishing figure disappeared into the shadows of the growing evening and growled to himself when a certain thought hit him full force in the brain.

The mission had just gotten a lot harder.

Because now...

Now, he was having doubts...

Authors note: Alright, well, I don't have much to say down here. So I'm just going to remind you that more reviews help me to write faster, and flying objects aimed at my head certainly do not.

(Sigh) I don't need a head injury so please...

Read and review!

JA!

RANDOM SONG LYRIC-

"I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence

Two roads diverged in a wood and I

I took the one less traveled by...

And that has made all the difference."

-Frostiana (The road not taken) By Robert Frost.

(This is one of my favorite songs that we are currently singing in my chorus class. It's an adaptation song of the poem by Robert Frost "The road not taken.")


	4. Chapter 4

Dancing with the devil

By Zeldagurl

Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha or any songs that I've mentioned or anything; or else that mean that I am veery veery rich. (Which I'm not)

Authors note: So, I'm sorry about not updating for a while; but I just couldn't write during the holidays. I'm never able to get in the mood... I love Christmas and everything, so I was totally happy the whole month of December. Plus a video game that I've been waiting for to come out actually came out, and I've been consumed by playing it for the longest time.

So I hope that you enjoy!

(Begin)

_It was dark..._

_It seemed darker than any night he had ever seen before. Or rather... Had not seen._

_He was running through a forest, breathless and confused as to why he was running, and what he was running from. He heard something coming from behind him; something that was almost able to match his speed perfectly._

_He was scared, so scared..._

_He was scared of whatever was behind him, more than he'd ever been his whole life._

_"Inu..." It whispered, with a deadly deep voice._

_He lowered his head and put an extra burst of speed on, inspired by his fear. He ran as far as he could, as fast as he could; meaning to try and outrun whatever was trying to hurt him._

_"Inuyasha...?" A voice called from ahead of him, a voice that would seemingly belong to an angel. He looked up, only to see Kagome, standing not one hundred yards ahead of him, her eyes wide with fright._

_He growled in his throat, angry and afraid that she might be engulfed by whatever was chasing him, simply because she had chosen to stay near him._

_"Run! Don't wait for me! Just go!" He screamed, furiously trying to convince her to get the hell out of the way._

_She pondered his statement for a second, and then set her feet firmly into the ground in a defiant pose._

_"Inuyasha, I'm not running away from something I don't understand." She called, her face suddenly transforming to become partly angry and partly concerned. _

_"You're so stupid!" He answered._

_He growled once more, suddenly understanding that no matter how much he yelled at her, she wasn't going to get scared and run away._

_He would have to face whatever it was, if Kagome was going to survive for another few seconds. _

_He pulled to a step, a few mere feet from where Kagome stood, and turned around; setting his feet much like she had only a few seconds before._

_Darkness came fast and furiously, obviously meaning to destroy them both. Inuyasha felt his heart hammering in his chest as he gathered his courage to face the darkness. He had no idea what he supposed to do against something as vast as the darkness that he now faced. He didn't know, if in only a few seconds both of them would be dead. The mystery taunted him mercilessly..._

_But just before the darkness reached him; he felt a small soft hand curl into his. He looked back, to see Kagome's beautiful eyes, looking into his with a soft smile on her face. Sudden warmth filled him and brought him strength that invigorated his whole body. He stood up straighter, and felt more ready than he had been before, ready to die and maybe ready to live, he didn't know. She smiled even wider, feeling his grip on her hand increase. She opened her mouth to say something, as though she was thankful but couldn't quite find the right words to say..._

_And just before the darkness engulfed them; he found himself smiling back..._

Switch)

As the morning light began to shine in through the walls of the tent, and the interior of it seemed to come alive; Inuyasha flexed his arm slowly. He grunted and frowned as pain that he had somehow gotten used to and forgotten about, came flaring back to him in a vengeance.

He let out a breath that he hadn't known he had been holding in and flopped back onto his bed, staring restlessly up at the canvas ceiling with an impatient pout on his face.

Everyone else was able to sleep in these stupid places; every stupid patient in this place slept like there was never going to be a time for sleep after this time. He didn't understand how they did it...

First of all, there was always some sort of smell that assaulted him, or just seemed to drift by. His mother had always told him that he was lucky to have such a good nose and a good sense of hearing; but he had always cursed his heightened senses, especially at times like these.

And of course there was all of the snoring and snorting and groans of pain; he was getting so tired of hearing all of the bodily noises of the hospital. For once, he understood why women hated when men forgot to exercise proper table manners... He was so sorry for making those noises himself that he was prepared to fully apologize to Kagome in the morning for the burps that he had not even thought about as they came out.

But most of all, he hated the hours that he had to spend during the night, awake and alone. Being more of a disciplined man at heart, he had always slept very sparingly. And that had always been a very good thing for him; meaning he was always on alert for when danger might come.

But here, he found that he had boundless hours filled with nothing at his disposal. He had spent the last four days staring off in space besides for the time that Kagome stopped by to talk and check on him.

Ironically, this had become one of the safest places for Inuyasha to rest since he had been a little boy. He hadn't guessed that the enemies' sense of caution was so lax that they would never detect him unless he caused an uproar of some sort. But he supposed that it was just his dumb luck, playing in to make him crazy.

So he tried not to worry too much about it.

Kagome had said that he was already about a week down the road to healing, and had about two weeks to go until he would leave. She said that he might still have a slight limp if the wound didn't heal well; but that he had made out pretty well compared to all of the other wounded men that she tended to.

"Plus, you've got me taking care of you; so you aren't too terribly screwed, huh?" She had said, chipperly smiling as he pursed his lips in reply.

"Yeah, my lucky break huh?" Either she had missed the sarcasm in his voice that day, or she had chosen to ignore it; because he hadn't yet received any punishment for it. He personally liked making her mad with his terrible speaking manners; it made things more interesting for him.

Although lately, she had been catching on; and had been much more pacifistic in her way of dealing with him. So he had made it his personal goal to make her blow up; in one way or another any way.

But Kagome was one tough case to crack. He had never met any woman who generally stood up for herself; even underneath his razor sharp wit and fierce temper (Not to brag or anything). And he wasn't surprised that the only good part of his days seemed to be when she was there with him; forcing him to be at least partially social.

And even he could admit that he enjoyed her daily visitations; more so than he had enjoyed much else in his life. Her fiery nature and her soft understanding for things that he had never even thought to try to explain to her amazed him. She was a complete oxymoron, a paradox that confused him with her multiple personalities. And he loved that he wasn't able to figure her out immediately, unlike everyone else he had ever met.

But no matter how he was feeling about her, and the rest of the hospital; he knew that he still had a job to do. And that he wouldn't be able to spare even a single nurse who would go against his mission. If she found out, and tried to resist him; he would have to kill her, or kill himself.

He gritted his teeth as he tried not to imagine the situation; pushing it away like all of his other bad memories.

He looked down at his scarred skin, frowning at it and willing it to heal faster.

Maybe he could still get this over with, and allow her to live.

Even if it might cost him his own life in the process.

(Switch)

"Have you had any communication from that dog?" A deep voice asked quietly.

"No, we have not had communication from Inuyasha." Another voice said, almost indignantly.

"It has been a week, and it seems that you have made no progress. Your superior is most displeased with your choice for the mission." The first voice said quietly once more.

"Well what does he want me to do?"

"Your superior has elected to send in another agent to ascertain the fate of your first agent and to finish the job that your agent was supposed to have started." The voice seemed to sneer.

"Agent Inu is perfectly capable of taking care of the mission. You should tell your damn boss to mind his own business. There is no need to send another agent." The second voice growled.

"It is most unfortunate that the other agent had already been sent. There is nothing that you or the superior can do about it now. It is regrettable that you will have to be embarrassed in this event of your agent being either dead or about to die."

"He's going to kill him?"

"That was the order, should it be revealed that he is endangering the goal of the mission."

"Surely you don't have to kill him. You don't have to waste a good soldier like that."

"The Japanese people do not tolerate weakness, you know this. If you don't, then you'd better learn it before someone decides to come and teach it to you."

A brief click echoed from the other end of the line, letting the man on the other end know that he was done being lectured. He hung the phone up quietly, sighing and moving to hold his head in his hands.

He should never have sent him on the stupid mission. He should have known that Inuyasha would mess it up and get killed. He should never have let him go, even if he was the best agent that he had on hand.

"Sir?" A door opened and a boy stepped in, obediently bowing at the distraught commanding officer.

"What is it?" Sesshoumaru said, looking up at the boy with a stolid look on his face.

"I was just sent to remind you that you have a meeting to attend in twenty minutes."

"Alright... Thank you."

Sesshoumaru sighed as the boy left and looked back down at the files that he had previously been going through.

"Little brother, what have I gotten you into..."

(Switch)

She sat in her tent once again, alone and afraid of the vivid dreams that haunted her too harshly. She shivered, holding her blanket around her and trying to keep her sobs from waking anyone up.

It had started out so normally, as her dreams now always did. She had been walking through a garden at the relocation camp. She had bent down quietly to smell the flowers and to admire the plethora of colors that the flowers displayed. She had wanted to visit the garden one last time before she left for the war, and she had snuck out after packing when the stars began to come out.

"Hey Kagome..."

She gave a little gasp and turned, her eyes widening as she realized that she was surrounded by three boys that she recognized from the camp school.

"Umm hi..." She said, taking a short breath to try and calm herself.

"We saw that you signed up to be a nurse overseas in the war." One of them said.

"Yeah..." She said tentatively.

"I guess it's a noble thing you're doing, huh? Going to nurse the men who are fighting our people. You must feel wonderful, knowing that by healing one man, you're going to be killing one of Japan's."

"We're not going to the pacific front. We're going somewhere in Italy." She said weakly, realizing possibly a little too late that they weren't simply there to say hi.

"She looks like she's got the wrong ideas in her head." One of them said.

"Yeah, she sounds like a traitor." The other replied, probably urging the leader to do something by provoking him towards her. The leader didn't respond at first, and she almost thought that he was going to tell the others to leave her alone.

That was until a terrible, wicked grin marred his features, and he opened his mouth to reply.

"What do you think Kagome? Should we show you how it feels to be a traitor?" She realized in horror that they were meaning to do something terrible to her.

Her heart quickened as she made a mad dash for the cabin nearest to them. She ran as fast as she could, her legs pounding the ground and burning like fire within only a few seconds. But she quickly felt someone tackle her to the ground and turn her over, even as she was kicking and screaming.

She felt herself being dragged back towards the garden...

And her fear blinded her, waking her up and making her remember that night in vivid detail. She cried and breathed fast, clutching the blanket around her.

"No! Don't remember it you idiot! You don't need to remember it!" She whispered desperately, clutching at herself and coughing in her panic.

She was so afraid; afraid of everything and nothing all at once. She wanted so badly for something to wrap around her and hold her tightly.

She wanted to forget it all...

"I'm such an idiot." She croaked.

She stood up immediately, tugging her blanket around her and slipping her feet into her shoes. She felt as though she was suffocating; she had to get out!

As soon as her shoes were on, she ran like in her dream, her feet pounding on the dusty dirt that lay outside of her tent and all through camp. She didn't know what to do... She ran and she cried, almost not knowing where she was going through the chaos that her mind was currently in.

She ran as far as she could before to fell to her knees outside of a larger hospital tent, coughing and choking on her own breath. She got up and stood, leaning against a wooden pole, breathing heavily and coughing.

The girl looked up at the tent's door, flapping quietly in the light breeze.

This was Inuyasha's tent, wasn't it? He was in there, only a few feet away from her. The thought of Inuyasha's stolid security made her mind calm itself slightly as she limped into the tent, still breathing heavily.

She peered into the dark interior, locating his bed with an almost practiced ease. The girl clasped her arms around her naked shoulders, having lost the blanket while she was running. She was only clothed in her nightgown.

She came upon his bed, tugging a chair from the nursing station and bring it to rest at the foot of it. She sat in it, feeling terrible for even coming while he was asleep the way he seemed to be at the moment.

He lay under his blanket with his eyes closed and his brown hair halfway covering them. He seemed to lie there stiffly but peacefully. She felt so stupid for even presuming that he would be awake to make her feel any better. She hated how finicky her fears made her... She hated how unsure she was of everything but her fears...

She leaned forward in her seat and rested her head against the mattress, calming herself as best she could before even thinking of answering him.

"Was that you out there just now?" The bed shifted as she felt him turn to face her. He groaned and seemed to sit up slowly, with much stress and pain. She felt even sorrier for making him sit up, and even wake up for that matter.

She breathed quietly and hushed her sobbing breaths.

"Was it?" He asked once more, sitting up slowly with a pained grunt.

"I'm sorry... I... woke you up." She said quietly, not daring to look up into his eyes. She knew that he wanted her to answer him... But she felt so ashamed that she had run to him like a little girl. She didn't want to face him... Now that she was here and everything.

"That's not important Kagome, answer my damn question."

She lifted her head and raised herself to sit properly in the chair, although she still avoided his eyes.

"Yeah..." She whispered, "It... was me."

She felt a weight settle on her shoulders and looked up to see that he had graciously put his blanket around her.

"You could get even sicker if you run around like this without anything on." He murmured, avoiding her eyes when she looked up at him with a silent question of curiosity and confusion. She had thought that he would be the least likely of people to give up his blanket for someone else, even in the direst of straights. He had not seemed like the most avid supporter of chivalry...

"So why did you come here so late at night?" He asked slowly, groaning a little as he shifted position slightly. She cringed and lowered her head once more, hiding beneath her raven colored hair.

"I couldn't sleep." She said quietly, finding that she was able to speak without searching for the breath that had had to be manually forced to stay behind her words.

"Bullshit." He said dryly, "You wouldn't be here if the only problem was that you couldn't sleep."

"How would you know that? You barely know me." She said weakly, struggling for the strength to argue.

"You were just crying." He said cautiously.

"So? What's your point?"

"My point is that you were crying, and that can mean only two things. Either something happened that made you cry so badly, or you're one of those girls who get upset at the simplest things, which would be very stupid of you to be."

She felt stupid anyway...

"I had a nightmare."

A faint sound of rumbling echoed throughout the camp at that moment; the distant sound alerting those awake that a storm was on its way. The faint pitter-patter of rain began to sound, falling softly against the walls of the tent. Inuyasha looked over at the wall; sighing and watching the rain appear on the tent.

The lights inside the tent themselves were off; but the lights outside remained on, giving a look of twig light within the tent. The rain didn't alarm Kagome though; nor did the darkness... It gave her an almost secure feeling, of being safe here with Inuyasha...

She shook her head and looked up at Inuyasha, wondering why she had just thought that way about him; when she noticed that he had turned back to her. He had his eyes fixed on her, staring at her in a way that she couldn't quite discern.

"I have nightmares sometimes too." He said quietly, shaking his head briefly and looking back down at his lap.

"I guess... I always used to have them after my mother died. I was... Always afraid." His voice thickened tightly with emotion.

"Inuyasha." She said softly, forgetting her own feelings for just a moment. She reached out and laid her hand on his limp one lying on the blanket. He flinched slightly, and looked up at her. His face roughly surprised and almost... confused.

After a moment he continued.

"So, what I'm getting at is that I understand about nightmares."

She smiled slightly at his admission and sniffled up some of the tears that were on the verge of coming out previously. He blushed and looked away from her smile, biting his lip.

"Don't get me wrong, I-I'm not a weakling like you. I don't let that kind of shit bother me." He retained his defiant, yet embarrassed face, and avoided her eyes as much as he could in order to keep his tough-guy facade.

"I'm just sayin' that it happens." He concluded.

She smiled again and wiped up the last of her tears.

"Yeah, I know Inuyasha, I know..."

She looked up and around her, hearing the rain coming down even faster and harder than it had been just a minute ago. She sighed and realized that she would have to wait until the storm was over to make a mad dash to her tent. She would probably have to spend the night here with Inuyasha...

She was disturbed and delighted at the idea, and she wondered how and why she was feeling those two things at the same time, especially because the idea itself was not supposed to be something that delighted or even disturbed her as much as it did. It wasn't as though she was supposed to be spending the night with one of her patients, especially since they weren't romantically involved anyway, nor should they be...

She had never thought about Inuyasha that way, had she? She shook her head and pursed her lips, turning to him.

"Sounds like it's going to be a doozy." She said looking back down at the injured solider in the bed. He looked up at the tent wall and snorted at the droplets that hung on the rough outside of the canvas. He hunched his shoulders and looked back down, gazing absently at the dog-tags that hung around his neck. Both of them were silent for a moment, presumably waiting for the opportune time to speak, or at least waiting for the other to speak...

After such an intense display of feelings on both of their parts, it seemed hard to both Inuyasha and Kagome to be able to go back to the sarcasm and light-heartedness that they had previously had between each other (Although Inuyasha pretty much stuck to the sarcasm).

"You're not thinking of going outside, are you" He said incredulously, raising an eyebrow as she sighed and thought for a few seconds, weighing her options.

"I don't suppose so." She said looking back at the nursing station that sat undisturbed just a couple of beds away.

"I might just stay at the nursing station for the night and do some work."

"You mean you aren't going to sleep?" Inuyasha said flatly, shifting in his sheets.

"I'm not going to be able to fall asleep, so I might as well do some filing or something. At least that way it'll be less work for someone else who is needed in more serious matters." She said sparingly, her voice wavering on the bridge between quiet and loud.

"And you're really _just_ being nice?" He raised an eyebrow quizzically. He hated how nice people went the extra mile for people who were just dishonest idiots anyway; he could hardly believe that sharp-witted Kagome was one of them.

"Well... That and the fact that they'll owe me a favor." She admitted, standing up and rubbing her eyes with her palms.

"I knew it." He said flatly, lying back on his bed and shifting until he was comfortable and in a position to watch her.

She ignored him, and rubbed her arms, shivering from the damp air that was now infiltrating the tent from the growing storm. Inuyasha saw this, rolling his eyes as he remembered that she had run in here with only the bare necessities on. He gathered up his thicker blanket and sniffed it quickly, making sure it didn't smell disgusting or anything (As was often the case with used blankets), and offered it to her.

"Here."

She turned around and looked at the blanket, reaching out a hand to touch it.

"Inuyasha, this is your blanket. You can't just give it to someone. You need it, especially because you're wounded." She frowned at him, "I don't want you to get sick, especially on my behalf."

He rolled his eyes once more sitting up and taking her hands, placing them to grip the warm blanket.

"First of all, you aren't just 'someone', you're Kagome. Second of all, I'm not already sick, like the person that I'm offering this blanket to. And finally, third of all, I'm not cold." He said as he let go of her hands, bringing his own fingers to rest upon the sheets of the bed. And even though she opened her mouth to protest, he set his mouth in a firm line, apparently showing that he had made up his mind, and nothing she could say would make him change.

"Alright... Since you're being so stubborn, I'll take it." She relented, sighing in her fatigue.

"Good." He folded his arms across his chest smugly and smirked, closing his eyes and enjoying his small victory.

But before he knew it, she was moving closer and leaning down to press her lips against his cheek in a soft flutter that was not unlike a flower petal brushing his skin. It lasted only for a second or two, but it made his heart jumpstart into a hammering pace within his chest. He blushed and opened his eyes, neglecting to hide the shock that was on his face.

"Thank you." She said, her eyes crinkled with shy mirth and her lips curved in a sweet smile that made his heart beat even faster. He quickly found his voice and muttered,

"Y-you're welcome."

She smiled even brighter, bringing to blanket to fold about her, and turned towards the nursing station, moving slowly with a slow and thoughtful sway. Inuyasha watched her for a moment more, his heart still hammering in his chest and his cheeks still bright with an accompanying feeling that jolted him out of his previous mood.

He swallowed and caught his breath, watching her sit down before laying all the way down himself into the bed. He took a deep breath and looked up at the discolored ceiling, watching the rain fall and patter onto the outside of the tent.

'This,' He thought, 'is going to be harder than I thought.'

**Authors note: **To those who have been waiting patiently, I give the most sincere of apologies. I should be smacking my head against a wall right now, but, my excuse is that I've been extremely busy these past few months. I had a leading role in a musical at my school, and when I wasn't practicing for it, I was sleeping to keep up my energy for it. Besides the fact that I was totally stuck on this chapter as well as a chapter of another story that I'm working on along with this one.

So, please be patient (as you all have been for... lets see... three months), and I'll try to pop another chapter out as soon as I finish the chapter for the other story. Hopefully it'll see the light of day before I decide that there's something wrong with it and condemn it to obscurity (For another 3 months) in my computer.

Thanks for reading!

And, well, you know what to do! Press that button at the bottom of the screen and review so that I can figure out if I'm insane for messing with this chapter for so long, or not.

**Random Quote:**

**"Courage is not a virtue, but the point at which all other virtues are tested." -C.S. Lewis**

**(I love The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie! Almost as much as the book. I mean, I get shivers when I watch that damn battle scene!)**


	5. Chapter 5

Dancing with the Devil

Chapter 5

By Zeldagurl

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha, he belongs completely to Rumiko Takahashi and whoever gets the rights to him. I just like playing around with his and Kagome's emotions (sounds creepy now that I say it out loud, huh?)

(Begin)

"This bullet wound is really coming along nicely." Kagome cooed while lifting the blanket to look at Inuyasha's stationary leg.

It had been a few days since their night encounter, and things hadn't changed much for Inuyasha and Kagome.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you started walking within the month."

She stepped back and took him in as a whole, smiling in appreciation.

"Oh, and your skin! It looks a lot better! It almost looks normal."

Inuyasha rolled his eyes at her cheerful manner and flatly looked up at her, with a long-suffering sigh of agony on its way.

"What a thing to say to man constricted to a bed." He said in the typical 'woe-is-me' manner. Kagome almost swore that she had seen his arm sort of twitch in the direction of his forehead, almost completing the stereotypical look.

"Anytime bonehead."

Inuyasha ignored her reply and swallowed quickly, opening his mouth to complain to the nurse who was currently writing his progress down on a chart.

"Well, anyway, it's been long enough. I've been here for a week already; in fact, it's almost been two weeks." He said grumpily, obviously back to himself. Kagome gave him an understanding smile and grabbed the gauze to rewrap the wound, moving his off-white blanket to the side.

She sighed, "I know it's hard to lie here all this time but you can't expect too much of yourself, especially after surviving a bomb blowing up on you." She wrapped it thoroughly and gave it a gentle pat before pulling the blanket back down to cover it and looked back at the black-haired man.

The truth was that Inuyasha and Kagome considered themselves differently acquainted than the rest of the camp, even though neither one would admit it.

They were just a lot more comfortable with each other than before, almost as though they were good friends, or closely bound cousins... Or maybe even just... Well, as of that moment, not romantically involved yet.

The point was that the degree of fondness was the same.

"Just give yourself some time to heal, and count yourself lucky that you haven't lost your life like a lot of other soldiers in this war."

Other times, Inuyasha noted to himself that he probably would have argued with her just for the sake of spite. But Inuyasha didn't find that much fun in making her upset, especially since she got upset easily more than ever, and because she was sick. He didn't want to go making her day worse, since she probably had a hard time anyway. He didn't even know why she was still nursing; Kagome's sickness wasn't really minor. To him, it seemed like it lingered longer and heavier than any other cold he had ever encountered (although he couldn't claim to be much of a doctor).

"Listen, I'll be back to check on you in a half hour." She said jerking him out of his chain of thought and making him deflate slightly at the sudden knowledge that she was leaving. She grabbed her clip board and stepped away, smiling slightly as she turned.

"Where are you going?" He asked, deciding to take an annoyed tone of voice for good measure.

"Just to file some charts and stuff... you'll survive, won't you?" She grinned at him, brandishing her clipboard and pointing at him while walking backwards towards the entrance of the tent. Inuyasha growled and rolled his eyes, turning away from the entrance to face the tent wall, pretending to be exceedingly angry.

He had to admit that it wasn't very logical the way that the two of them were acting. It was almost like the both of them were in high school again, or at least like the little bit that Inuyasha knew before he had jumped ship and quickly been picked up by the government because of his brother. And he had never been the type to flirt with the girls anyway; he had usually sat there in his own gloom, looking on as teenagers lived their trivially-minded lives. He got the feeling that Kagome had never been like the usual girls either...

He wondered absently, rolling back over and staring at his patch of ceiling and accepting the growing displeasure he had with the world now that she was gone, if that was why he was so fascinated with her...

(Switch)

It had been only a couple of days since he had settled in and made his first report back to base. He had all of the minimal materials that he required to operate successfully, and he was sure that the mission was going to go well, despite the suicidal outlook of it.

Kouga was an experienced solider, and an even better spy. He had been the best at the training, along with another idiot who really only got through it with pure dumb luck (but that was beside the point), and he had been picked personally by his superior.

It had been easy enough to infiltrate the camp; Kouga deciding to come in the easy way by bribery and deception instead of becoming injured as his predecessor had done. He lived in a nice tent that he had all to himself, and took a very decent officers salary.

'Stupid fools.' He thought to himself.

It was amazing how little that the American army noticed. He had expected it to be much tighter and harder to gain entry to; but instead, he found that for all the effort he took, he had easily just walked right in.

No one even seemed to suspect him of anything. A young Japanese man with long hair and blue eyes, with an amicable yet fiery disposition; not to mention that his English wasn't the best. Everyone just assumed that he was just another man from the relocation camps who wanted to fight for his newly adopted country.

'As if...' He thought as he looked in the mirror hanging on the side of his tent. He adjusted his uniform and straightened his collar, making his appearance as an American might; being educated in how Americans acted and dressed and thought was useful for the mission, but Kouga made a note to himself to make sure and forget everything about the wretched culture once his mission succeeded.

Seeing that he was dressed in a certifiable way, he quickly turned and grabbed his rifle and his identification, making to leave the tent.

He stopped for a moment and closed his eyes, letting his shoulders droop for just a few seconds before finding his resolve within himself and opening his striking blue eyes once more, leaving the tent and emerging back into the world of his enemy.

(Switch)

Kagome looked down at her food and sighed; if the inhabitants of the camp got to have at least one decent meal in all of the time they were there it would be a miracle.

She walked quietly to her table and set her meal down, settling herself in for a painful experience.

"Hey there stranger." She looked up to see Sango's cheerful face. She smiled and scooted farther along the bench for Sango to sit down.

"Hey yourself." She said in reply, looking back down at her food with a look of utter disgust. Kagome bravely reached for her fork and started to push the bland food around on her plate. Sango giggled as she sat down next to the girl,

"I think you're just being dramatic, Kagome. The food isn't... that bad." She looked down at hers and forced an enthusiastic smile. She took her own fork and stabbed some lumpy mashed potatoes, pulling it back out and finding that a solid chunk came with it. Kagome grinned and brandished her fork her,

"Even you can't get yourself outta this one. Since you think it's so great, why don't you take a great big bite right now? Go on, try it." She smirked at her best friend confidently.

Sango looked nervously from Kagome to the 'mashed potatoes' on her fork, evidently pondering which fate would be worse.

"Ah... No problem." She swallowed the lump in her throat and slowly lifted the forkful of food to her lips. The nurse closed her eyes and jammed the food into her mouth, chewing noticeably and having a hard time swallowing the pieces she managed to break off of the big hunk. Kagome smirked at Sango, leaning an elbow on the table to support her head as she held back a giggle. Sango rolled her eyes and swallowed the last of the food, giving Kagome a quizzical eyebrow as she gulped down her water.

"Well, it's as good as anything we had back home." She smacked her lips appreciatively.

"Uh-huh." Kagome glanced at her flatly.

"What? It's true!" Sango pursed her lips and went back to picking at her food while Kagome laughed to herself. The two girls ate in silence for a moment or two, both of them wanting to pay meticulous attention to what they picked out to go in their mouths.

"So..." Sango said after a moment.

Kagome looked up at her in the middle of trying to eat a trio of slimy green beans,

"Hmm?"

Sango leaned in closer and looked back down at her food.

"You've been spending a lot of time with that boy in your section haven't you?" She discreetly looked back at Kagome who raised an eyebrow at her.

"Yeah... I guess I have." She played with the green beans left on her plate with a twirl of her fork.

"Ever since you were switched to his section, you've been in a better mood and you look better too." Sango paused for breath and stared at Kagome hopefully, "Everyone is saying that you look... a little happier." She didn't want to seem too obvious, but she did want the truth from Kagome, and she was afraid that the only way to get that would be to be direct with her.

Kagome met her eyes for a few seconds and then looked back down, opening her mouth to say something, but then closing it again, unsure what to say.

"You seem to like him very much." Sango smiled.

"I do." Kagome smiled back shyly and blushed, "But it's nothing really. We're just good friends. He's been really great to me, listening and being really friendly."

Sango smiled knowingly and went back to her food,

"Well, if that's the case, then I'm glad you found someone who has the time and the brains to listen to you." Sango admittedly felt a bit guilty about not having enough time to be Kagome's listener, but she was happy that her friend had adapted without her.

"He does," Kagome said quickly, "Inuyasha is very smart, and good to spend time with."

Sango nodded,

"Well, that's good." She took a long breath, "But, Kagome," She took a breath, "You should give the guy a chance. If you like him and... Well, he likes you, then you should just let it happen." Sango said carefully, knowing that she had to walk carefully with Kagome in the territory of men. Kagome tightened her jaw and looked down at her half-eaten food.

"He's not out to scare you." Sango said quietly.

Kagome looked up at her with a strange look on her face. It was like she was afraid, and yet she wasn't. It was calmer than being afraid, like she already did trust the guy, but she wasn't sure it was trust, or that it had existed without her thinking about it.

"I-I know..."

Sango sighed and looked back at her food with an air of finality, poking at her own ignored green beans with a look of dread.

"Now that we've got that out of the way, I wanted to ask you..."

Sango crossed her legs carefully and smiled at her friend again, raising her eyebrow to complete the expression of mischievous curiosity.

"What's he like under that shirt? He must be pretty well endowed for _you_ to take a liking to him, ya old perv!"

"Sango!" Kagome's eyes darted from side to side as she choked on her beans, making sure after she resumed breathing normally that no one had heard her friend.

"Honestly! You're just like Miroku." Kagome narrowed her eyes at her friend good-naturedly, putting her hand delicately to her mouth, feigning disgust. Sango giggled and poked her friend in the side, which made her squeal with ticklish laughter, naturally.

It was so easy to forget what happened to her, when she would let herself... Which seemed to be happening more and more often. So maybe someday she could put it behind her...

Kagome stole a look at her friend who was now laughing at something that Kagome had just said in response to her latest jibe at Kagome's apparent perversity. Kagome shook her head and rolled her eyes, because she knew that Sango was just goofing around.

'With friends like I have, I think anything is possible, 'Cringing at the corny undertones, she smiled fondly at Sango and decided to quit griping about and try to conquer her slimy beans so that she could go back to see Inuyasha. So with that thought in mind, she ate with new determination as well as to her friend's apparent amusement when she made the worst faces of disgust since the mess hall had served clam chowder...

(Switch) (Much later...)

"Kagome! We're going to get caught!" Inuyasha hissed.

"Not if you're quiet we won't." Kagome hissed back as her eyes darted from the hill to the tent.

They were about halfway there, just a bit further, which Inuyasha wouldn't be happy about, since he had to hobble there and he had no idea where they were going anyway.

"This is really stupid." Inuyasha almost seemed to know what she was thinking.

"You're stupid."

"Okay, that was really bad. I'm really starting to doubt that you have it together here." He almost shouted, "Which begs the question, why am I following you?" He hunkered down as soon as he was done, realizing that he had been a little loud. He peeked meekly from behind Kagome, thanking his lucky stars that none of his superiors or fellow spies could see him now... Or could they...?

Inuyasha muttered to himself, swearing that if he ever got out of this job and went back to wherever he was going to go, he would buy a farm in the middle of nowhere and raise one of the most obnoxious and unexpected animals he would be able to think of. Then at least people would leave him alone, because he could always sic his newly acquired chickens on them.

Inuyasha knew that the chicken thing was bordering on senility, but senility was probably his best option when raising chickens in his farm in the boonies.

Just then Kagome all but grabbed his hand instead and dragged him towards the grassy knoll directly in front of them. He hobbled after her, forgetting about his loony farm for a moment while Kagome opened the gate that bordered the field. He cringed as his leg wound emanated pain from being used for the first time in two weeks. Kagome had simply burst into the tent, demanding that he try his luck with crutches and follow her out. And then when he had refused, she had dragged him out of bed herself, Inuyasha had been supremely surprised at the strength in the girl, especially considering her nasty cold.

They took a few more minutes, walking fast into the field, kagome leading the way silently with a clever smile on her face. Inuyasha wished that he knew what she was thinking; it was something that he had wondered about several times over the past week or so, probably starting when she had come during the middle of the night, during that rain storm.

She walked daintily over to a patch of flowers and plopped herself down beside them, inwardly cooing, Inuyasha could imagine, at their uninterrupted beauty. She looked up expectantly and patted the ground beside her with a placating smile. Inuyasha rolled his eyes and took slow, but deliberate steps towards her, lowering himself to the ground slowly with a little of her help.

It was a quiet night, away from the noise of the camp, it seemed as though they were the only two people around. Kagome took a deep breath of the fresh air and leaned back, "I think this was a farmer's field before the war. I'm glad that some of it isn't trampled over." Her eyes flickered towards the flowers and then back to him.

"The front's always moving though. Yesterday's flowers are today's trampled fields." He looked over at her and noticed the disappointed look on her face. He scrambled in his mind to come up with a little more of a cheerful answer.

"The air's a bit cleaner." He shifted slightly, patting his hands over the grass next to him and absently ripping some of it, like a child. Kagome didn't seem to notice, though she did smile at his improvisation.

"I knew you'd like it." She smiled vaguely at him, and then scanned the night skies. "I figured that you could use a change from that stinky hospital tent." She made a face.

"I can always count on my nurse." Inuyasha joked, smirking at her kiddingly as she smiled.

They were comfortably silent for a few moments, both relishing the feel of the others company in a field where they weren't surrounded. Inuyasha felt safe, especially since it was just Kagome there with him.

"Inuyasha..." Kagome looked over at him lazily, without much purpose in her gentle eyes, "What do you want to do when the war is over?"

Inuyasha looked over at her with a serious expression on his face, his violet eyes undecided.

"The war might never be over." He looked back down at his hands, suddenly depressed all over again at the prospect.

Kagome sat up a little more and furrowed her brow, "All wars end Inuyasha, it's just a matter of time before one side beats the other." She shifted and hugged her knees, gazing at nothing while thinking about everything. Inuyasha pursed his lips,

"I know." He paused, "But for people like you and me, it'll never go away." Her heart sank at his words; she pursed her lips as she watched him deflate.

Kagome knew what he was talking about; she had been thinking it ever since she had come here. There was no moving on, and no going back to herself, especially the naive young girl that she had been before all of this ever came into reality. She hunched her shoulders,

"Well, I'm going to try anyway." She wanted to cheer him up, and if her... philosophy, as she called it thus far, could at least let him know...

Inuyasha smiled at her wearily.

"I wish I was like you. You seem like you could get over anything." Kagome mentally winced at his words and looked back over at him, taking a breath and starting at the beginning.

"It's not that I get over things, really," she took a slow breath and thought for a moment, "I grieve and I cry and I hurt over things like everyone else... I let stupid things bother me, and I worry about things I shouldn't." She looked over at him and nudged him, "I worry about your health now, almost constantly. But I shouldn't because I know that you're strong, and you'll pull through." She smiled. Inuyasha felt that funny feeling again, spreading like butter through his heart. He managed to smile back.

"I've got baggage like you wouldn't believe. Things that I think about that bother me so much that I just want to let go of it sometimes, even when I know I can't." She continued.

"And maybe some things I know I'll never put behind me. But I still hope that someday I can." She smiled self-consciously after a moment, knowing that she had worked herself into a rant, "I know, it doesn't make much sense."

She shifted in her position and looked up at the sky with a shy smile on her small face. Inuyasha couldn't help but admire her, sitting there as though life wasn't over because of this war, as though life hadn't been over before this war.

"But that's why, after the war is over, I'm going to start out with a clean slate. I'm going to take my family back to a safe place, and I'm going to enjoy it." She said determinedly.

"That's brave."

"But that's the thing Inuyasha, I'm not brave." She looked at him truthfully, "I just want to find a way back to something that I can hold onto after this. Even if I only ever dream about it." She admitted.

They were silent again, Kagome suddenly doubting that Inuyasha had really wanted to hear all of that, and Inuyasha wanting a little more of Kagome's courage, or whatever she called it. Maybe it was just a will to live. The intensity lessened, and they were back again, sitting in a field outside of a military hospital, a nurse and a solider side by side.

"I always wanted to go someplace where I would be alone, even as a child." Inuyasha glanced at the stars with a speculative smile, kind of folding into himself while emotionally opening himself up. Kagome watched him from where she sat, just listening.

"Maybe I'd go to live on a mountain top, or by a river bed." He wondered aloud, "That way no one would try to bother me." He didn't want to ruin the seriousness of the moment by telling her about his kamikaze chickens.

"You want to be alone?" She peered at him through ebony bangs with a sad look on her face. Inuyasha normally disdained pity, because usually the person didn't even try to understand before feeling sorry for him. That was why he had stopped telling people about his mother, and his feelings. His feelings were locked away where no one could touch them and make them grow... or diminish.

"Yeah." He said quietly, leaning back on his palms and blinking at the distant lights of the camp.

"I don't know if I could handle being alone like that. I would need someone there." She smiled jokingly, "You know, to watch my back."

He smiled lazily, "Because everyone's out to get you, huh?"

"It can feel that way sometimes, yes." She said condescendingly and grinned at the boy beside her. "But really Inuyasha, living by yourself like that? Aren't you afraid your going to go crazy, living out your days shooting at shadows with a shotgun?"

"I'm counting on it." He said blandly. "At least no one would bother me with their wars and their politics, and their stupid, stupid grudges." He waved a hand generally at her to emphasize his point.

Kagome shrugged and took another breath of the fresh air, "If that's not peace, I don't know what is." She yawned. "But I don't think that you need to be all alone out there."

"What makes you think that?"

"I don't know Inuyasha... I just..." She looked at him earnestly with a genuine smile in her eyes, "I don't think that anyone truly wants to be alone. Especially not you, even for all this talk and show about being alone." Inuyasha didn't answer and she continued, "You could give everything for your lonely mountain top, but once you got it, it wouldn't be worth it, you would have no one to share that... that peace with." Inuyasha's eyes glinted at her sadly as he looked away.

"But if you don't trust anyone, then how are you supposed to find the person who would want to share that peace with you, forever?" He felt sappy. But it was a question that he knew that he would have to be answering soon. Inuyasha knew that he didn't really want to be so alone, the way he always was when he had lost his mother.

"I..." She paused for a moment, "I suppose that you just have to give somebody a chance someday." Inuyasha gave her a meaningful glance and then looked away.

She vaguely wondered why he was telling her all of this, and why she was saying such things. If anything, Kagome should have been taking a lesson from her own book first. Now that she had been... hurt like that by those stupid boys, she knew that she wasn't going to be able to live as though everything was okay. She needed to learn how to trust again, too.

"Well, this is all a bit too serious for a night away from the stink-hole." She stretched, breaking the tense moment between the two. That was twice now that Kagome had shared her deep-most thoughts with Inuyasha, she wasn't sure why. She reached down and picked a flower, placing it on her ear and standing up with a sweet smile on her face.

In the distance, some lounge room was playing music, and normally it would have only served as an annoyance to them both, since they were both the type to complain about the crazy party across the street just because it was happening. But tonight, it was a nice coincidence.

Kagome aligned herself like a slow waltzer and swayed slightly to the music, closing her eyes and enjoying the nostalgic feelings that the slow love song was crooning into her spirit. Inuyasha watched and smiled, saying nothing but enjoying it all the same.

The low voice of the singer stopped for an interlude of a slow, jazzy instrumental and Kagome hummed alone, cracking an eye open in the direction of the amused boy.

"Someday, when you can walk again. We'll dance, you and me." She promised lazily, ignoring that little voice in her head that was screaming at her to sit down and shut up. "And maybe all of the world will go away." She closed her eyes as though she was in some far off dream.

Inuyasha smiled slightly as she continued to sway to the music that now seemed almost natural for the both of them. "I'd like that." He said with his eyes fastened on her with a quiet, but new-found fascination that seemed to occur to him now more than ever. The wind whistled softly through his hair, blowing it in the direction of the woman who was swaying in front of him.

And for the moment, and only for the moment, Inuyasha closed his eyes, and believed that he was in the dream with her, swaying with the dying strains of a lover's ballad to one long gone... Imagining that someday he would dance with her until the moon died and the sun was again newly born.

Back in the shadows of the camp, a figure leaned against a jeep, watching the two of them from afar with a slow smile of anticipation. He directed a glance to the radio on his fore-arm, grinning at the device as though it had just granted him a huge reward.

"Is that clear, wolf?" The radio crackled at him quietly.

"Pristinely, sir." He answered.

"Good, we will expect results within twelve hours. Alpha out." Kouga covered his radio again and directed his glance at the waiting military truck that he was suddenly very concerned with.

He had work to do.

(End)

Authors note: Hey, so, as usual, I'm sorry for not updating. (Sigh)

I've really had no idea where to go with this story, I've tried planning things out, and it's been a long and arduous journey through plot and characterization. Besides the fact that I kind of lost my mojo midway through the writing of this chapter. At least now I've finally got it back, somewhat anyway.

So, despite popular belief, I did actually put some thought into the **title** of this story. The question I'm asking, is, can any of the history buffs tell me how 'Dancing with the Devil' ties into the plot (Historically)? If anyone knows, tell me in a review, and you will personally be mentioned in the next chapter, and if that's not enough, I'll draw a picture of a stick figure with a history book (Consider yourself lucky, I wish I had a stick figure drawing to have and to hold) and then somehow send it to you.

So until then, read and review!


	6. Chapter 6

Dancing With The Devil

Chapter 6

Written by Zeldagurl and edited by Jynx

Disclaimer: (On the authoress' chair sits a sign that says 'Gone making Inuyashie-shaped Jello... By the way, I still don't own him, come back later. And I don't own Batman either, so just go away.)

Authors note: Holy Frozen Mackerel Batman, Zeldagurl's updated within a month!

Oh wait, false alarm.

I've just finished another musical and I'm in the gap between two productions. One ending and one starting. So naturally, me having no life without musicals, I suddenly have tons of time to write and do homework and such. Don't get used to it. Though I really hope I can keep this trend up. So please keep being lovely, lovely readers and review! I read each review and I really do take your pointers and criticism seriously. I want to write as best I can for those who read my works. Believe me, I like finding a good story as much as the next person, and I hope that, for a few of you, that good story is here.

Alright, enough of the sappy stuff, I'll leave the rest of that for Inuyasha and Kagome .

(Interlude)

He knew that he had to choose one or the other... And the time to choose was quickly coming to an end. If he didn't make up his mind, it would be made up for him.

His country... The place that meant nothing to him now. The place that had called him useless, despite his efforts to prove it wrong. The place where he was born and the people who had sheltered him until he was old enough to be on his own. If he stepped against it, he would never go home, or see the people that he had once known. He would be estranged from his own home to start over again in an alien and strange new one.

It was familiarity versus what? Familiarity barely mattered to him, he didn't need to be comfortable or calm to live; though Inuyasha knew that he would take a place that he knew over nothing, if the choice came to that.

But then... there was Kagome. The woman who meant... more now. The girl he saw every day, come rain or shine. The one who grinned at him, and laughed with him and had promised a dance to him the very night before. If he walked away from her, then... life wouldn't be half the worth he had begun to think it was. He didn't want to cross any bridges into love or undying devotion or anything... but he knew that there was more for him with Kagome around then there was with anyone or anything else. He had come to depend on her dependable nature...

And hadn't that been what he was missing so long ago? He had wanted more, but he had never known how much, or how little it would take to appease his heart like it used to know things to be long ago, when he had known all the things that constituted 'more'.

More...

He made his choice quietly in the night, marked by nothing but a quiet sigh and a head drooping forward on his chest.

And now that his mind was made, he knew that he would lose everything in order to follow it through. And he knew that there was more pain coming to him, and to Kagome, some that he didn't know that he could weather. But he knew that the truth would make the pain worthwhile, and that after that hurt, there would be nothing left to change.

The end was coming to find him, to hunt him and hurt him... and Inuyasha was going to welcome it's clear conclusion with open arms.

(Begin)

The morning dawned red on the camp, heralding the war horns that had come back again to blow.

When the both of them awoke in the morning there was a war going on all around them. The distant pops of guns firing and the loud boom of the cannon, along with the louder boom of a shell hitting near the camp, echoed through the worn tents. The cannons were aiming closer and closer, even the cannons of the defenders seemed not to care whether the hospital was in their way.

The front was moving.

Kagome woke with a start as a shell impacted closer to the camp, forcing her gasping awake in wide-eyed fear.

"Wha...?!" She jumped out of her bed and ran to look outside and see the harried condition of the camp, not caring who saw her in her night gown. She would probably kick herself later for it, seeing as the morning air was likely chilled stagnantly, enough to make her cold all day.

Nothing had been blown up yet, but everyone was scared out of their minds. Kagome was unsure of what she was supposed to do, she hadn't exactly been paying pristine attention when all of the nurses were briefed of war time evacuation conduct earlier on. Now she wished that she hadn't just retreated into herself like always.

Luckily Sango barreled into her from the side and dragged her into the tent with a quick explanation,

"The front's moved, Kagome, we've gotta pack up and get onto the trucks!" She ran over to her cot and grabbed her bag full of her few knick-knacks and possessions.

Kagome watched her while struggling to understand, "...But they just told us yesterday that the battle was going well! We were driving them back!" She argued hopefully.

"Yeah well, apparently they're driving us back." Sango replied shortly, slinging her bag over her shoulder and turning to face the confused woman. "We don't have much time. Get dressed and get onto a truck. We have to get out of here." Her steely tone indicated that she was much better prepared for a situation like this than Kagome was (since she had been an apt pupil during the drills, unlike Kagome).

She nodded at Kagome once more before rushing out of the tent, leaving the other woman inside, just now beginning to scramble to get dressed and packed. Her hands started shaking with nervousness as she spun around her room, grabbing for her things and making to comprehend her situation.

As soon as she was all packed, she decided that it would be best to go and make sure that Inuyasha was okay before finding a truck to get onto.

The trucks were just loading up as she sprinted to the tent, bursting in and finding her section of patients just being packed up into the trucks. She scrambled to where the varied men and soldiers were working. .

As soon as she entered the farther section of the tent, she called out to Inuyasha, who was currently trying convince a soldier helping to move patients that he could walk perfectly fine, which, of course, Inuyasha couldn't; but so far as reality went, Kagome suspected that Inuyasha wasn't really aware of things like walking and being sane.

"Inuyasha!" She yelped above the clamor.

He immediately turned at the sound of her voice, furrowing his brow as he saw her moving against the harried crowd and darting from bed to bed to get to him. It distinctly reminded him of that 'Island Hopping' that some of the other men were talking about a couple of nights ago while they were all trying to sleep.

"You're supposed to be with the other nurses! Why are you still here?" He yelled angrily as the soldier gave up on him and decided to move onto another patient more willing.

"Good luck little lady." The solider said as he passed to the next comatose solider. Kagome smiled at him in good humor and shook her head, turning her attention to the petulant man in the bed. Someday, Inuyasha was going to get punched in the face if he kept giving such helpful citizens a hard time.

"...Because I need to be." She said distractedly, side-stepping a frantic orderly. "Are you okay?" She asked breathlessly, reaching out a cool hand to his forehead and looking him in the eyes to make sure he was completely intact. She felt a little faint herself, probably from the run over and all of the panic and everything, but she decided not to worry about it until later.

She coughed slightly and Inuyasha frowned and kept his eyes on her.

"You shouldn't be here." He looked at her pointedly. Apparently he had used this same back wards tactic on the other soldier, she guessed it was a sort psychological approach.

"If you're referring to my interrupted beauty sleep, then don't worry your little head about it. I should be sleeping, but as you can see, I'd much rather deal with you complain than sleep." She said sarcastically, concentrating on tucking his blankets into the small mattress with a long-suffering expression set on her face, readying him for a move onto the truck in a motherly sort of way.

"I mean with all of this. " He shook his head. "You know, the camp and all, stupid."

Kagome blinked, "Oh." She frowned at him after a few seconds, "Well, if you're going to play it that way..." She thought for a second or two before coming up with an equally insulting name, "...Bone-head." It was a pathetic response, and Kagome knew it, but she stuck by it since it was insulting enough for a man like Inuyasha to take offense.

But for once, Inuyasha didn't take the bait."I don't need your help Kagome, go find a truck and stay on it," he pressured her. The girl wasn't taking this seriously, and it was bugging the hell out of Inuyasha. He didn't want to see something happen to her, not now that he'd realized...

"I need to help, Inuyasha!"

"Who could you possibly help, huh?" He growled.

"Well, you, idiot. Who else?" She raised an eyebrow at him and rolled her eyes, making a dumb face as she made a 'duh' sound directed at the boy in the bed.

"Some help you'd be... You'd probably push me right into a shell hole for fuck's sake!" He went the abusive route, knowing as well as she did that Kagome was a klutz through and through. Not to mention that she'd probably end up falling in a shell hole herself, especially if she wasn't properly supervised like this...

Kagome glared at him and sighed, frustrated. "You're just thinking insulting thoughts in that little pea-brain, aren't you?"

...Alright. Maybe not, Inuyasha supposed that it would take a whole new breed of idiot to toddle into a shell hole without actually taking the time to see where said idiot was going. "Maybe I am..." He said elusively, wondering if Kagome could see what he was thinking, like some mind-reader or something.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" She placed her hands on her hips and tapped a foot expectantly. Apparently, she didn't agree. Inuyasha couldn't believe that she was actually getting side-tracked with the oldest trick in the book... He didn't think much of it except using it to his advantage like the focused mastermind he was.

"It means that you're a klutz." He replied evenly, though he didn't have much grounds for his statement, other than a couple unsteady moments when Kagome's balance hadn't been the best, nothing too extreme. He figured that he was going for effect, not intelligence.

"I know I am Inuyasha, and I've learned to live with it. You should too."

Damn, no good. Inuyasha tried to regroup and tried not to think of any of the insults that she walked into every day, those were too normal. Kagome wasn't the smartest person he knew, but she had a dumb luck about her, he guessed that it was one of her redeeming factors at best... But that wasn't really the point at the moment, was it? No... Insults, insults; he had a whole arsenal just waiting to be used. Though it wasn't anything too serious or mean... Just a little tiny bit...

Suddenly, a shell exploded just outside of the tent that silenced their arguing as both jerked towards the deafening sound. The noise increased and a wind blew through the tent, easily increasing the panic of those inside. Tables were knocked over and beds went flying, and everyone was screaming. Inuyasha grabbed the obstinate nurse and shoved her to the ground, leaning over her with a protective gleam in his fierce eyes.

The blast lasted and subsided as quick as it came, but left behind it an aftermath of drawn faces and burned skin. Half of the tent was destroyed and looked as though it was about to come down. The silence was deafening.

The dust settled, and Kagome looked up in child like wonder of the utter destruction. Inuyasha opened his eyes to see her staring, and vaguely wondered if they were going to die that day.

Kagome looked at him, staring deeply into his eyes, sharing the same fear and desolate acceptance.

"We've got to get out of here." She breathed, shakily breaking the stare and rushing towards the nursing station to grab some gauze and bandages and throwing them on Inuyasha's bed.

Inuyasha seemed to relent as Kagome finally seemed to be doing something that would propel them towards leaving sooner. If she left now, she would most likely get hurt without a proper escort. Inuyasha mentally shrugged it off and figured that he would just have to protect her more closely.

"They're ordering another truck for the rest of us." He shifted slightly. "Why are you bringing all of that? Aren't there already medical supplies on the trucks?" Inuyasha frowned at her as she grabbed a pack of sorts and put all of the supplies in it.

"You never know. Anything could happen today." She looked up quickly and shrugged.

She was right, any second a bomb could fall or a bullet could fly, and if she happened to be in the way, instead of being safe in a truck or in the next camp... Inuyasha didn't want to think about it. He was simply stuck on that fear. He was distinctly reminded of his reasons for insisting that she go on another truck before the invading army came...

The last truck pulled in slowly, and started loading up while Kagome was filling the rest of her bag with painful things like alcohol and Iodine. There were little kits too, conveniently labeled for cuts, burns and gun shot wounds; Kagome grabbed one of each, mindful that each one had the possibility of happening.

She soon had the bag on the make-shift table of the nursing station, watching Inuyasha out of the corner of her eye. She bent down for a moment, making sure that she hadn't missed anything in the bins on the dirt floor when she felt a shadow fall over her.

She jumped up with a hand clutched to her heart, facing the stranger.

"Sorry! I didn't mean to scare you."The man lifted a hand up out of concern. Kagome coughed and shook her head,

"No, sorry. I'm just a little tense. Don't worry about it." She smiled, waving his concern down with a dismissive hand.

She finally looked up at him and realized that it was the man that she had run into the week before, the one with the long hair and the insolent blue eyes.

"You..." She furrowed her eyebrows. "I've met you before, haven't I?" She was almost stunned.

"Yeah, Kouga... Remember?" He smiled charmingly. Kagome darted a glance to Inuyasha who had suddenly looked up with a strange frown on his face. He stared with a ferocity that bellied his stubborn will. He looked almost betrayed... Not good.

Kagome looked back at Kouga, "I'm sorry, I'm a little busy now," She stepped back. "Maybe when we're not in the middle of a war zone." She quipped quietly, hardly daring to say much more.

She ducked back down to the bins, earning a confused glare from Inuyasha. Kouga leaned over the table to peer down at her, ridiculously at ease with everything, despite the bombs falling all around them.

"I wasn't going to ask you to dinner again."

"Well then what did you want?" She asked almost irritably, frowning at his sangfroid attitude. "...In the middle of an evacuation, I might add." She really hoped that Inuyasha was listening, she personally thought that she sounded quite cool, if she did say so herself. She looked back at Inuyasha...

Apparently both of them were ignoring her. "I'm loading this truck, and also letting you know that there's another truck for the doctors and nurses waiting outside that I'm supposed to take you to." Kouga smiled at her again, obviously trying to project a positive image.

Kagome frowned and looked up at him, "Says who?"

"Doctor Miroku." The smug man lied seamlessly.

"Well..." She thought for a few seconds, darting another look at the glaring man in the bed. Inuyasha looked up at her with a serious look in his eyes, he wanted her to do something, but she wasn't sure what. Kouga made a face, "What are you looking at? Mind your own business." Inuyasha didn't look away, but only seemed to become a little more agitated. Kagome felt like she was standing between two toddlers arguing over a toy with the way that the both of them were glaring at each other.

She looked back at Kouga and he broke the glaring match to urge her once more.

"So. Are you coming? The truck's leaving soon, and I've gotta get you outta here." He nodded at her.

Kagome wasn't so sure... Something gave her a feeling... She didn't know what it was, or why Kouga was setting the feeling off... But she didn't like it. Kouga struck her terribly as the wrong kind of person, she didn't think she would ever feel safe with him, or at least not the way she felt with Inuyasha... Besides, she didn't like that he had just verbally slapped her charge, even if Inuyasha deserved a slap or two.

The funny thing was, that Kagome hadn't even thought about who she was going to be riding with, she had just run over here willy nilly, though Sango had told her to go to a truck. She guessed that she had just assumed that she would be with Inuyasha, especially at a time like this. She didn't think of anything else otherwise... That surprised her.

And it led her to one more dangerous, but safe thought... If something went wrong, who would she want to be with? A man she had met briefly before who seemed self-assured but... was strange at the same time: Kouga, the Corporal? Or the man that she... that she couldn't imagine camp life without: grumpy, but understanding Inuyasha, the soldier...?

"I'm riding here, thanks." She nodded swiftly and darted towards Inuyasha, dropping her bag on one side of his bed as the driver and another man came to lift him into the truck. Kouga stayed where he was, confused and frankly a little baffled that a woman had said no to him.

He gawked for another few seconds before decidedly shrugging it off, apparently rejection just rolled off of guys like Kouga. He sighed and walked off, regretting that a such a pretty woman had to be caught up in the affairs of spies and enemies.

Kagome helped lift Inuyasha into the waiting truck, "Uhh! Inuyasha!" She grunted. "What have you been eating from? The 5000 calorie selection? You're as heavy as a ton of canned potatoes!"

"That was uncalled for!" He cried.

"Yeah, well, when you lift me into a truck on strength alone you can complain about my weight too." She answered generously, lowering her part of his bed onto the floor along with the other two soldiers lowered theirs in sync. She leapt nimbly down to the ground to grab the big bag and tossed it next to Inuyasha, like a very big place-holder while she helped with the last few men. Inuyasha glared at it grumpily and it seemed to stare back, unreactive, like a demented baby sitter.

Kagome hopped back on and plopped herself next to him, grasping the metal bars on the side of the truck as the vehicle jerked into motion. And within a few feet of movement, Inuyasha found himself leaving behind the world that he had known for two weeks with Kagome, somehow, he was pretty sure that he wouldn't miss it too much.

The girl was strangely silent, watching the tents grow smaller and smaller with a set expression on her face. He noticed that she was so pale, so small. But Kagome was a pretty tough customer, she was an experience all by herself, that was for sure.

"You really do look a lot better you know." Kagome sighed and looked over at him.

"Better?" He asked gruffly.

"Yeah, your burns are mostly all healed. And you could probably walk around on crutches if you really had to. I think you're a fast healer or something."

"Maybe." He silently regarded his hand where it lay on his chest. It was pretty normal looking now, wasn't it?

"I guess some people are born like that, and some aren't." Kagome smiled and turned her attentions back to the falling camp. She sighed and was quiet for a long moment. "This is so weird. I thought that we were untouchable there, from the war and the guns, and all of those terrible shells."

"But I guess not. It couldn't have been helped." She hugged her knees childishly and kept a wistful smile drawn across her face.

"Are you going to miss it?" He voiced, sitting up slowly and painfully so as to speak and see better.

Kagome eyed him and smiled, "I-I'm sure that I won't." Her eyes flitted downward. "The new camp will be the same." She winced as a bomb fell close to the truck that had come through another part of the camp and followed at a distance. She was afraid, he could see it in her hands that shook and her eyes that never stayed in one place. Now that they were out in the open field, away from the false security of the tent, he was a little nervous too.

"I just hope we get there okay."

"Why wouldn't we?" He prodded.

"I don't know... I just, I can't shake this feeling of dread. I feel so... like I woke up in this state of panic that I can't get out of." She sighed.

"But if it's going to happen, it'll happen, right? If we die, then there's no way to avoid it, it's fate." She concluded quietly, making sure that no one but him heard her. "And we could die, right?"

"We could die..." He mused, nodding grimly.

"Inuyasha, I'm scared." She leaned into him, mindful of his wounds. His heart skipped a beat stupidly, and he wondered why it had to leap around like that when things like this happened. He ignored the rest of that thought and calmed himself.

He closed his eyes and wound his arms around her carefully, relishing the feel of her. How many times had he wondered what this would have been like? He remembered every single moment, every second that he had wished for this security in her arms...

"Are you regretting this?" He asked quietly, praying that they would make it through the day, or even the hour. "You could be safe now... in the new camp, far away from here."

Kagome looked up at him and smiled, shivering still in her fear, "Inuyasha, I don't regret anything at all. Especially not being in this truck, here with you." She sounded so sure...He listened and let her words enfold him.

The girl was silent for a moment or two, comprehending finally that she was in the arms of a man. And normally, being so close to a man would have set her off panicking... But she knew that she trusted Inuyasha, that much had been clear since almost the beginning. What had happened before seemed so far behind her, and though the feelings were still buried in her heart with deep dark roots, she felt that she could almost forget all of that; At least for this moment, she knew that she could enjoy being safe.

Kagome took a shuddering breath. "And if we die here..." She swallowed hard and buried her face in his chest, letting his strength buoy her quietly. "I... I wouldn't mind going with you, if we have to go." She couldn't believe that she was saying those things, she couldn't believe that it might come to dying, but Kagome knew that her words were true.

Inuyasha was strangely silent, his eyes closed and his arms resting tightly around her small frame.

The moments passed slowly as bombs went off all around them. The open backside of the canvas walled truck provided a view of the place that they were leaving behind. The front was moving closer and closer, and all of the buildings and structures were coming down, the tents like funeral shrouds of the land. The fields behind the camp were still undisturbed, except for the odd shell and truck, but Kagome hoped that the flowers might survive, those simple flowers that bore witness to last nights meeting under the stars. She hoped unreasonably that they might make it through the days, living until winter's frost took them in it's course.

If something so delicate and fragile could survive this ruin, then so could she... Though basing her existence on flowers probably wasn't the wisest idea...

"Kagome... I'm sorry." Inuyasha whispered into her hair, distracting her from her thoughts.

"For what...?"

"For a lot of things." He was so close to saying it... He wanted to tell her, but he was so afraid. For the first time in his life, he was really afraid of losing, of pushing her away forever.

And he had never even realized it until now...

He valued the times spent with her, and he valued her, that was beyond doubt. But that also meant that... He valued his own life as well. For the first time... he wanted to live, to be around her. He now had something that he had endlessly been searching for, and though it sounded corny to him, he knew that she had given him the pathway to his purpose. The light that he had been wanting would come through her, he knew it.

He made a promise in his mind then to always protect her, even when she didn't want him there saving her; still he would, that would be his purpose for now. And it would all be invested in her, his very life and soul would be there, molded in her small hands.

And because she gave him the will and the might to live, simply by being there with him, she deserved to know the truth about him. His promise would never fail, and he would never fail her, if there was life in his body, or fight left in his soul. Even... even if she rejected him right here and now...

"Inuyasha...? What is it?" She whispered.

He wanted to say everything, that he was a spy, and that he had originally come to unknowingly destroy her. If he would have succeeded, and never been wounded, he might never have met her. He might have caused her to die with the thousands of soldiers that would have over run the hills of Italy. And he never would have known...

Suddenly, Inuyasha felt weak, down to the very recesses of his soul.

He sighed and looked away from her concerned eyes, "We're pretty close now... to the camp, I mean."

"Yes." She smiled, albeit a little cluelessly.

Inuyasha was a coward. He couldn't tell her, not now. He didn't want her to tense and look at him with that look that he could already imagine now...betrayal... His imagination couldn't be worse than the real thing...

But... if they both made it... He would tell her. He would tell her everything there was to tell, and if there was nothing left after that, than at least he would have his memories to live for.

"If we do make it, Kagome..." She listened to him intently.

He hated that this meant so much to him now, that he was so speechless in her wake, he just wanted...

"...If both of us are still standing when this War ends, could we be... if you wanted to be... could we be friends?" He asked tentatively, feeling as though he was dropping a bomb and watching it fall.

The word, 'friend', had never been in his vocabulary, and so its weight meant as much as the world to Inuyasha. It still meant an end to loneliness, and a start of a new life.

Kagome smiled sweetly and nodded slowly. "Inuyasha. You didn't even have to ask..." She rested her head against his chest again and breathed a sigh of contentment.

So there would be an ending to this war, wouldn't there? And when it did finally stop... it would be good, for both of them. It was...

And suddenly Inuyasha's eyes widened as he felt a seconds warning of scorching heat behind him, accompanied by a terrible booming sound. He pitched himself forward, along with Kagome, towards the ground just outside of the truck that was still moving. He had just a split-second to stare into Kagome's wide eyes, before both of them were engulfed by flame.

(Switch)

As the dust settled, the fires burned on, crackling around the victims who all lay silently.

Kagome opened her eyes silently, seeing only a world of fire and flame around her. Everything was burning. She sat up, groaning at the pain that seemed to be everywhere around her body. She knew that she was burned, and she remembered the fire that had devoured everything, even Inuyasha's gentle face.

She went stiff and looked around for a hint as to where her soldier had gone. It wasn't long before she spotted him in the trenched shadow of a black hill.

"Inuyasha!" She clambered down the smoking hill to where the soldier lay motionless on his back. He was bleeding and his face was slack. Kagome couldn't believe her eyes. She kneeled down next to him; he lay propped on a raised piece of ground, and she grabbed his hand, praying for him not to be dead.

The sky was bruised, and dripped its pain onto the landscape below it. What remained of a grassy field was now filled with craters and wounds that seemed they never again would heal. The dust blew and stuck to Kagome as it passed, the sweat framed her face and the dirt and the grime provided more of a picture of her desperation. The world seemed a hellish void now, and Kagome felt as though she was never going to see the real light of day again.

Her heart trembled within her, as tears came and went, here in the bottom of the world of light. Here, she didn't know what she should do; what would make a difference wouldn't matter by the time she could do it. She was disturbed from her thoughts by a slight stirring beneath her fingers.

The girl smiled softly and brushed Inuyasha's hair away from his face, seeing that he was still alive from the faint breath that passed her fingers.

"Inuyasha." He stirred at her voice and struggled to open his eyes, his beautiful eyes. His leg was bleeding, his skin was burned again, his arm was a mass of grisly skid marks, and his head was bloody. And Kagome was afraid.

Inuyasha opened his eyes.

"...Kago-me..." He licked his lips dryly to speak. His eyes burned brightly underneath all of the grime and the smoke of charred skin.

"We're okay." She soothed him.

He didn't know where he was. She could tell that right away, his eyes were unfocused. It was probably from the fall from the truck.

"Kagome." He pronounced clearer, confused. But he reached for her white hand that rested on his heaving chest. His physical pain was tremendous, and his body barely responded to him; he was glad when she reached back for his extending hand and held it.

"Hold onto me." Her command was enough for him, and he let his turmoil ebb. His fingers curled tightly around hers, white knuckled despite their weak grip.

"Are the bombs falling?" His voice shook.

Kagome nodded and looked over her shoulder as the skies darkened bleakly, watching the distant flashes and feeling the impact in the earth that she sat on.

"We'll be safe now." She looked back at him and he nodded, like a child.

Kagome looked around her in silence, seeing dead men and those quietly dying. The remains of the truck smoldered not far away, near the shelled house and the broken fences. She wondered if her bag was still intact, if it was, then it might just save them both.

"You're bleeding."He noticed. Kagome turned back to him and bit her lip, almost apologetically. She looked at her arm, it must have been scraped on the way out of the truck. She had noticed it before, but hadn't really cared.

"You're hurt worse than I am." She smiled as she would to a little boy. "We'll be okay, I swear it." She looked away again, searching for any traces of the bag that she had packed. But Inuyasha pulled her back fearfully...

"How?" He didn't want her to turn away from him again, Kagome felt her heart clench happily, somehow, for a few seconds of sweetness.

"The trucks will come back for us. They saw us blow up, but they're waiting for the bombs to stop." It was silent now anyway, Kagome couldn't hear any bombs or any trucks, just the wind. The unforgiving wind that blew the dust of dead men everywhere.

Kagome's hand trailed to his shoulder absently, though she jerked it back when he yelped in pain. Her eyes found his burned flesh, charred and angry.

"Your back..." She recoiled, from what she could see, his back was all burned terribly, even his hair was seemingly seared from the back of his head, leaving raw flesh.

"Oh, Inuyasha." Tears filled her, and spilled out of her eyes for him. "You're so burned..."

"It's okay." He breathed unsteadily, as though he was just realizing the pain himself.

Kagome was so angry with herself, and shocked. It was the fire from the front of the truck, the agony that Inuyasha had felt before her because his own back was to it. His eyes had widened in warning, and he must have felt it before her. He had taken the fire firsthand, and she remembered that he had curled around her, and that had been all that she had registered at the time.

"You protected me."

Inuyasha didn't answer, only moaning in pain and slightly writhing as it came to him. It was like he had been disembodied before, but now he was back in the sensation of being in pain and being alive. Kagome's heart hurt the same way...

Kagome leaned forward and placed her arms around him as best she could without hurting him, in an effort only to keep him close to her, and after a few hisses and grunts of pain on his part, they lay in an embrace, bloody and true as truth is. Inuyasha breathed fast and closed his eyes through the pain, half delirious again.

"Don't die Inuyasha. Please don't die on me." She whispered, her lips brushing his ear softly.

Inuyasha didn't answer, and wondered, not for the first nor the last time, if he was really going to die. He hoped not, for Kagome's sake. He simply breathed in her smell and felt the warmth of her body staunch his mitigating strength for the moment.

Not far from the two, the wind caressed a small patch of flowers that waved gaily at the sky. The wind blew the hair of the soldiers marching in the field, but did nothing to the tanks that were coming, came, and left.

And soon all of the men and the machinery left and were gone from sight, leaving only a few crushed flowers, struggling to stay alive in the mud.

(End)

Random Song Lyric: (Suggested by my brand shpankin' new beta/editor, Jynx)

"Throw it all away

Lets loose ourselves because there's no one left for us to blame

It's a shame we're all dying, and do you think you deserve your freedom? How could you send us so far away from home when you know damn well that this is wrong. I will still lay down my life for you..." -Soldiers Ballad, By Muse.


End file.
